AMERICAN defence policy is focusing ever more on one fear: that North Korea will be able to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, armed with a nuclear, chemical or biological warhead, within the next 10-15 years, capable of reaching anywhere in the US and Europe. The potential threat posed by North Korea's secret ballistic missile programme was laid out in detail in a recent US National Intelligence Estimate which was classified "Cosmic Top Secret". A declassified summary has been made available by the Pentagon.

America's dire warning is causing alarm in Europe, but not out of fear of a forthcoming Armageddon. America's partners are worried that the US proposal to build an anti-ballistic missile system will, if approved by President Clinton, return relations with Russia to Cold War status.

Yet America is proposing to deploy a multibillion-dollar national missile defence system, initially with 100 interceptors in Alaska, on the off-chance that a country like North Korea, Iran or Iraq might decide to fire an ICBM at the US.

The Europeans are not yet convinced. Even a limited ABM system, aimed at protecting against rogue missile attacks, would undermine the one concept which kept us all alive during the Cold War: nuclear deterrence. It would unravel all the arms control agreements reached with Russia, especially the ABM Treaty. It might also lead to a new arms race, particularly with China.

The US remains hopeful that the Russians will "come round" and will agree to modify the ABM Treaty to meet the challenge of North Korea and other rogue states. But Europe does not share that optimism.

The irony is that Russia installed a 100-missile ABM system around Moscow, as agreed under the 1972 ABM Treaty, but the US decided against doing the same at its ABM site at Grand Forks in Dakota. Any move now to put 100 ABM interceptors in Alaska would breach the treaty.

The latest US National Intelligence Estimate admits that North Korea, Iran and Iraq would view their ICBMs "more as strategic weapons of deterrence and coercive diplomacy than as weapons of war". But the US judgment is that the "probability" of an ICBM armed with a non-conventional warhead being launched is higher today than during most of the Cold War.