Gates: US Will Not Accept Nuclear-Armed North Korea

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the United States will not accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Meeting with Asian defense ministers in Singapore Saturday, Gates said painful sanctions against North Korea may be the only way to peacefully end its nuclear program.  He said Washington will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to destroy targets in Asia or the United States.

Gates said the U.S. and its allies are still open to dialogue with North Korea, but will not bend to provocation.  

A top Chinese military official at the conference called for calm.  Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told the delegates that the Korean peninsula should move towards denuclearization.

On Friday, North Korea test-fired another short-range missile off its east coast, and threatened to take retaliatory action if the United Nations imposes sanctions for its latest nuclear test.

It was the sixth short-range missile North Korea has fired since its nuclear test Monday.

The U.N. Security Council is considering possible new sanctions against Pyongyang.  

U.S. officials said Friday there are new signs that North Korea may be planning more long-range missile launches.

The United States says it is sending its North Korea envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to Asia next week along with Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg for talks on how to respond to North Korea's missile tests.  

Also Friday, U.S. officials said an initial U.S. air sampling from near the underground North Korean test site was inconclusive.  North Korea said it carried out the test on Monday, and seismometers recorded shock waves that are consistent with an atomic explosion.

Pyongyang announced this week it is no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War.  And it warned South Korea it would take military action if Seoul and the United States make any move to intercept North Korean vessels under a U.S.-led effort, the Proliferation Security Initiative, to restrict weapons of mass destruction.  

The move prompted South Korean and U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula to raise their alert level to its highest level since 2006, when the North conducted its first nuclear test.