Washington — The Pentagon is considering whether to dispatch additional forces to the Pacific Ocean as a warning to North Korea that the United States could stop any attack even while embroiled in an Iraqi invasion, defense officials said.

Some U.S. ships, fighter jets and bombers have been alerted for a possible deployment, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has not made any final decision, officials said. Additional forces have been requested by Adm. Thomas Fargo, the Hawaii-based head of U.S. forces in the Pacific Rim.

The United States has been pursuing diplomatic means to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula, already at a dangerous point because of North Korea's admission in October that it had restarted its banned nuclear program.

But U.S. officials worry that North Korea might see an Iraqi invasion as an ideal time to launch an attack on U.S. allies such as South Korea or Japan, believing that the United States would be too preoccupied with Iraq to respond effectively.

Any deployment of additional forces would be designed to disabuse the North Koreans of that notion. The alerts include F-16 fighter jets that could be moved to Japan and B-52 or B-1B bombers that might be moved to Guam.

In addition, the Pentagon is considering whether to send the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson into the waters off the Korean peninsula, in case the carrier Kitty Hawk, normally based in Japan, steams toward the Persian Gulf. The Kitty Hawk served as a special operations launching pad during the Afghanistan war and could see that role again in Iraq.

About 37,000 U.S. troops are in South Korea, though the current alerts do not include ground troops to augment them.

Defense officials stressed that any move of U.S. forces would be strictly as a deterrent, or to fill in for other forces that might be called upon in an Iraqi invasion, and not an effort to turn toward a military solution in Korea rather than a diplomatic one. Secretary of State Colin Powell last week reaffirmed that the United States had "no intention of attacking" North Korea.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George W. Bush still believes the North Korean standoff can be resolved peacefully. "That doesn't mean the United States won't have contingencies and make certain those contingencies are viable," Fleischer said.

Still, U.S. officials are growing increasingly convinced that the North Korean government wants to begin full-scale production of nuclear weapons. U.S. officials said Friday that spy satellites had detected what appeared to be trucks moving spent fuel rods from a North Korean nuclear facility, a possible sign that the North Korean government might be preparing to process the rods to produce nuclear weapons.

Rumsfeld held a 45-minute meeting yesterday at the Pentagon with Chyung Dai-chul, a special envoy for the South Korean president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, who takes office Feb. 25. Chyung is on a weeklong Washington visit, set to include talks today with Powell.