By Phil Stewart
BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea is becoming a direct threat to the United States and could develop an inter-continental ballistic missile within five years, U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said on Tuesday.
The threat was first publicized by the U.S. intelligence community in 2001, but experts said Gates' comments could reflect progress North Korea had made in recent test launches.
Gates detailed the new U.S. assessment of Pyongyang's capabilities during a visit to Beijing, where he praised Chinese efforts to reduce tension on the Korean peninsula but also stressed the urgency to rein-in the reclusive state.
China is North Korea's top diplomatic and economic backer, and Gates said North Korea would likely come up in talks between Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington next week.
"With the North Koreans' continuing development of nuclear weapons and their development of inter-continental ballistic missiles, North Korea is becoming a direct threat to the United States," Gates told reporters after talks with Hu.
Gates said he did not believe North Korea was an immediate threat, but added it was also not a "five-year threat."
"I think that North Korea will have developed an inter-continental ballistic missile within that time -- not that they will have huge numbers or anything like that," Gates said. "But they will have, I believe they will have a very limited capability."
Analysts said Gates' assessment was identified in the 2001 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, which projected that during the next 15 years the United States "most likely" would face ICBM threats from North Korea and Iran.
"Those who follow North Korea know that this has been a threat long in the works," said Bruce Klingner, a Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
But he said Gates can be assumed to be working from current intelligence, which could reflect that the long-range "Taepodong 2 test launch (in 2009), which though was seen as a failure, actually doubled the effective range of that missile."
North Korea's arsenal already includes intermediate-range missiles that can hit targets at up to 3,000 km away, the Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying last year. Those missiles could hit all of Japan and put U.S. military bases in Guam at risk.
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
North Korea has also been seeking to develop long-range missiles for over a decade. Tests of its Taepodong-2, with an estimated range of 6,700 km, suggested it was still a long way off from producing the complete weapon, however.
In a 2006 test, it fizzled out after a few seconds in the air. A second test in 2009 was seen as a technical failure, although it stayed airborne longer.
Michael Elleman, senior fellow for missile defence at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said it looked like Gates "has stated a worst-case scenario."
"A more likely one is, many more than five years, he said.
North Korea's current launch system "takes them a month to prepare. That's not a combat-ready system," added Elleman.
At the same time, Pyongyang has stoked Western concerns over its nuclear program. It revealed late last year it had made considerable progress in its uranium enrichment, potentially giving it a second route to make a nuclear bomb.
Still, experts say they do not believe North Korea yet has the ability to miniaturize an atomic weapon to place on a missile.
The new U.S. assessment comes amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula after a deadly attack on a South Korean island and the sinking of a South Korean warship last year.
Gates suggested South Korea's patience with the North had run out, saying: "If there is another provocation, there will be pressure on the South Korean government to react."
"We consider this a situation of real concern and we think there is some urgency to proceeding down the track of negotiations and engagement," Gates said, while again conditioning any talks on a show of North Korean sincerity.
"But we don't want to see a situation that we've seen so many times before, which is: the North Koreans engage in a provocation and then everybody scrambles diplomatically."
TALKS WITH THE NORTH?
After threatening the South with nuclear weapons last month, the North has made almost daily offers since the start of the year to return to the negotiating table.
South Korea, which has called the offers "propaganda," on Monday responded to an official request for talks from the North with a counter offer for a South-North Korean government meeting to confirm the North's sincerity.
Gates suggested North Korea could announce a moratorium on missile and nuclear testing.
The North responded Tuesday by declaring the only way for the two Koreas to work out their differences was to sit down first at a table to test each other's resolve to iron out differences through talks.
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Laurence in Seoul, William Maclean in London and Paul Eckert in Washington; Writing by Phil Stewart and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel and Eric Beech)
