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by Stephen Collinsonö ATTENTION - UPDATES, ADDS quotes, bylineo The United States will not immediately press for sanctions against North Korea, a US official said Wednesday, as speculation mounted that the UN Security Council could soon take up the current nuclear crisis.

Secretary of State Colin Powell meanwhile cautioned that while he did not expect immediate breakthroughs in the showdown, he was comfortable some progress was being made by escalating international diplomacy.

One of his subordinates, US arms control chief John Bolton, earlier injected new urgency into the crisis, by saying in Seoul that the UN Security Council could be involved within days.

North Korea has warned it would deem any imposition of sanctions by the council to punish its twin nuclear programs as a "declaration of war."

But a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity that it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that Washington would immediately press for sanctions.

"The goal is to make clear to the North Koreans in many different ways that this is an international problem that they have created," the official said.

"That's the goal of taking it to the Security Council, it doesn't mean that we jump into sanctions right away."

The International Atomic Energy Agency reacted to Bolton's remarks by saying its members were divided on the need to refer the crisis to the council.

"No decision has been taken... There is no consensus yet," said Mark Gwozdecky, an IAEA spokesman in Vienna, ahead of a meeting of the agency's 35-member board later this week.

According to UN officials and diplomats, Russia still wants to pursue diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.

Powell meanwhile said in a transcript of comments to regional journalists released here that North Korea must be made to forfeit stocks of spent fuel rods as part of any deal to end the crisis.

While praising the Clinton administration for reaching a 1994 deal to end a previous nuclear showdown, Powell said any new solution would have to go further than merely freezing the program in North Korea.

"There were flaws in the Agreed Framework. One, the material was never removed. It's still there, and that's the problem we have now," he said.

Under the pact, 8,000 spent fuel rods from North Korea's Yongbyon reactor, which could be reprocessed to make nuclear weapons, were placed in canisters under 24-hour IAEA monitoring.

Powell conceded that the agreement had "bottled up" the nuclear genie in North Korea, "but left the bottle there so that the cork could come out when they wanted to bring the cork out."

The Stalinist regime in Pyongyang has kicked out the IAEA team, furious at a US decision to cut off fuel aid mandated by the 1994 Agreed Framework, to punish what Washington says is a new program to enrich uranium.

Powell said that an international crisis control effort which has seen Russia, South Korea and Australia send diplomats to Pyongyang and low-level US contacts with the Stalinist regime through its United Nations mission were producing slow progress.

"All of these contacts and conduits are being used to explore how to go forward. I'm comfortable that we are making some progress, but I don't think I'm predicting a breakthrough," he said.

"Negotiating with the North Koreans is a very difficult, arduous process." 

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