U.S. on guard for N. Korea, general says

BAGRAM, Afghanistan - The top U.S. military officer said Sunday that the Pentagon had bolstered its missile defenses and taken other steps because he “can’t take the chance” that North Korea won’t soon engage in some military action.

Heightened tensions with North Korea led the United States to postpone congressional testimony by the chief U.S. commander in South Korea and delay an intercontinental ballistic missile test from a West Coast base.

North Korea, after weeks of war threats and other efforts to punish South Korea and the U.S. for joint military drills, has told other nations that it will be unable to guarantee diplomats’ safety in the North’s capital beginning Wednesday.

U.S. Gen Martin Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, who just wrapped up a visit to Afghanistan, was asked whether he foresees North Korea taking military action soon.

“No, but I can’t take the chance that it won’t,” he said.

Dempsey said the U.S. has been preparing for further provocations or action, “considering the risk that they may choose to do something” on one of two nationally important anniversaries in April - the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and the creation of the North Korean army.

U.S. Gen. James Thurman, the commander of the 28,000 American troops in South Korea, will stay in Seoul as “a prudent measure” rather than travel to Washington to appear this week before congressional committees, Army Col. Amy Hannah said in an e-mail Sunday.

Thurman has asked the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Armed Services Committee and the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense to excuse his absence until he can testify at a later date.

Dempsey said both Thurman and South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Jung Seung-jo, decided it would be best for them to remain in Seoul rather than go to Washington. The Korean general had planned to meet with Dempsey in mid-April for regular talks.

Dempsey said that instead of meeting in person with Thurman and Jung, they will consult together by video conference.

The Pentagon has postponed an intercontinental ballistic missile test that was set for the coming week at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a senior defense official said Saturday.

The official said U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to put off the long planned Minuteman 3 test because of concerns the launch could be misinterpreted and exacerbate the Korean crisis. Hagel made the decision Friday, the official said.

North Korea’s military said last week that it was authorized to attack the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified” nuclear weapons. North Korea also conducted a nuclear test in February, and in December launched a long-range rocket that could potentially hit the continental U.S.

The U.S. has moved two of the Navy’s missile-defense ships closer to the Korean Peninsula, and a land-based system is being deployed to the Pacific territory of Guam later this month. The Pentagon last month announced longer-term plans to strengthen its U.S.-based missile defenses.

A South Korean national security official said Sunday that North Korea may be setting the stage for a missile test or another provocative act.

Citing North Korea’s suggestion that diplomats leave the country, South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s national security director - Kim Jang-Soo - said the North may be planning a missile launch or another provocation around Wednesday, according to presidential spokesman Kim Haing.

However, Kim Jang-Soo said the notice to diplomats and other recent North Korean actions are more of an attempt to stoke security concerns and to force South Korea and the U.S. to offer a dialogue. Washington and Seoul want North Korea to resume the six-party nuclear talks - which also include China, Russia and Japan - that it abandoned in 2009.

The roughly two dozen countries with embassies in North Korea had not yet announced whether they would evacuate their staffs.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague suggested that North Korea’s comments about foreign diplomats are “consistent” with a regime that is using the prospect of an external threat to justify its militarization to its people.

“I haven’t seen any immediate need to respond to that by moving our diplomats out of there,” he told the BBC on Saturday. “We will keep this under close review with our allies, but we shouldn’t respond and play to that rhetoric and that presentation of an external threat every time they come out with it.”

Germany said its embassy in Pyongyang would stay open for at least the time being. Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said it was considering a plan to evacuate its diplomats. India also said it was monitoring events.

In Washington, an adviser to President Barack Obama said “we wouldn’t be surprised if they did a test. They’ve done that in the past.”

Aide Dan Pfeiffer told ABC’s This Week that “the key here is for the North Koreans to stop their actions, start meeting their international obligations, and put themselves in a position where they can achieve what is their stated goal, which is economic development, which will only happen if they rejoin the international community.”

Asked on Fox News Sunday if postponing the missile test makes it look like the U.S. is caving in to North Korea, Pfeiffer said “absolutely not.”

“The onus is on North Korea to take a step back,” Pfeiffer said on Fox. “They are the source of the problem.”

If North Korea doesn’t step back, ”they will continue to further isolate themselves in the world,” Pfeiffer told Fox.

U.S. Sen. John McCain said the North’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, is playing a game of brinkmanship.

“In the past we have seen this repetitious confrontation, negotiation, incentives to North Korea to better behave, hopes that they will abandon their nuclear quest - which they never will, otherwise, they’d be totally irrelevant,” McCain told CBS’ Face the Nation.

McCain said China “does hold the key to this problem. China can cut off their economy if they want to.”

In China, Chinese President Xi Jinping said no country should be allowed to instigate regional chaos after North Korea’s mounting threats to attack the U.S. and South Korea included warnings of pre-emptive nuclear strikes.

“No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains,” Xi said Saturday in a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan. “While pursuing its own interests, a country should accommodate the legitimate interests of others.”

China is “seriously concerned” about the rising tensions, and will safeguard the rights and safety of its citizens in North Korea, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement Saturday. The Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang is under normal operations, he added.

While China and the U.S. last month agreed on tougher U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea after its nuclear test, American officials have traveled to Beijing to seek commitment on implementation.

“Clearly, with the border that they have, with the economic relationship that they have, they can do more,” U.N. envoy Susan Rice said in a Friday interview with MSNBC.

Also on Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry urged all sides to exercise restraint and not to move toward “provocative behavior.”

“We think that the event that is intensifying between North Korea, South Korea and the United states should be controlled as soon as possible,” Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying. “Both parties should not move toward a corner in which there is a threatening climate.” Information for this article was contributed by Robert Burns, Lolita C. Baldor, Philip Elliott, Erica Werner, Hyung-Jin Kim, Mari Yamaguchi, Louise Watt, Cassandra Vinograd, Kirsten Grieshaber, Ashok Sharma, Niniek Karmini, Nasser Karimi of The Associated Press; and by Henry Sanderson, Li Liu, Tian Ying, Scott Lanman, John Brinsley, Sungwoo Park, Lorraine Woellert and Danielle Ivory of Bloomberg News.