Sat Oct 14, 2006 4:12am ET
By Evelyn Leopold

Russia and China submitted new amendments to a U.S.- drafted U.N. resolution, which are expected to delay the vote by several hours, but U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said he was confident the resolution would be adopted on Saturday.

In Washington, a preliminary U.S. intelligence analysis has shown radioactivity in air samples collected near a suspected North Korean nuclear test site, a U.S. official said on Friday, five days after Pyongyang announced it conducted the test.

"That's right, though this is only a first look. People have been saying all along that the working assumption is it was a nuke," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At the United Nations, Bolton said on Friday evening that weapons-related "technical" amendments had arrived from Moscow, which council members were studying.

"I'm still ready to go for a vote. We will just have to see what the instructions are overnight in particular from Moscow and China," Bolton said.

Seeking to meet objections from China and Russia, the latest version of the U.S.-drafted resolution makes clear the measures do not include military force under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.

IMPACT OF SANCTIONS?

On Friday, China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, voiced reservations about the most controversial provision in the text that authorizes nations to search cargo going to and from North Korea for nuclear materials or ballistic missiles.

China wants the wording softened to make interdiction less mandatory in the resolution, while Russia has criticized other parts of the text.

With China fearing a flood of refugees from a sudden collapse of North Korea -- which was sorely tested yet survived the demise of the Soviet Union, the death of its founder and a famine that may have killed 10 percent of its people in the 1990s -- some questioned what impact any sanctions would have.

"North Korea is already very familiar with poverty," former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told Reuters on Saturday. "The country can also get support, at least in order to survive, from countries such as China."

Kim, the architect of South Korea's engagement policy with its old foe to the North, blamed U.S. policy in part for the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, which he said could only end if Washington held direct talks with Pyongyang leaders.

"The United States must talk to North Korea," Kim said in an email interview. "We have to talk not only with friends but also with enemies, if necessary."

In an effort to defuse the crisis, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit China, Japan and South Korea from October 17 to 22. A U.S. official said Rice would also likely travel to Moscow during the trip.

She may meet Chinese, Russian, Japanese and South Korean officials in Beijing to underscore their unity in opposing a nuclear North Korea, a U.S. official said.

Those five countries had been engaging North Korea in the "six-party talks" aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees.

THREATS EVERY DAY

The draft U.N. resolution would prohibit the transfer or development of weapons of mass destruction and ban sales of luxury goods to North Korea. It would freeze funds overseas of people or businesses connected with Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

It also imposes an arms embargo on heavy conventional weapons and allows a travel ban on individuals connected with North Korea's dangerous weapons programs, and their families, if a council sanctions committee approves the names.

North Korea walked out of the talks nearly a year ago, complaining about Washington's crackdown on its alleged smuggling and illicit financial activities and U.S. refusal to hold direct talks with a country U.S. President George Bush once branded as part of an "axis of evil".

North Korea again blamed Washington's "hostile policy" for the crisis, saying "... a dangerous atmosphere of confrontation reminiscent of that on the eve of war is now prevailing on the Korean Peninsula", the state news agency, KCNA, said.

Christopher Hill, the State Department's point man on North Korea, said the United States was not nervous about Pyongyang's "blood-curdling threats."

"I can assure you we can deal with these sorts of belligerent threats," he said in remarks at Washington's National Press Club. "North Korea makes threats every day of the week, including on Sundays."

(David Morgan reported from Washington. Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Jack Kim in Beijing, Lee Suwan in Seoul, Will Dunham and Sue Pleming in Washington, George Nishiyama and Linda Sieg in Tokyo, Oleg Shchedrov and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow, and Karin Strohecker in Vienna)

(Editing by Bill Tarrant; Evelyn Leopold)