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WASHINGTON 뼎 North Korea appears to be continuing its ballistic missile program and selling technology to other nations despite a well-publicized testing moratorium, a top U.S. intelligence official told Congress on Wednesday.

While North Korea so far has fulfilled its promise not to test missiles in the atmosphere, ground testing of various components is believed to be taking place, said Robert Walpole, the CIA official in charge of strategic and nuclear issues.

"Our judgment is that they are continuing the program," Walpole told a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee. "The program is still alive."

Walpole summarized the unclassified portions of an intelligence estimate of the ballistic missile threat completed in September.

In 1994, North Korea agreed to shelve its nuclear weapons program in exchange for energy supplies from the United States, Japan and South Korea. But it unnerved Asia and Washington in August 1998 by testing a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean.

Last September, North Korea agreed to forgo a test of the newly developed longer-range Taepo Dong-2 missile for the duration of talks with the United States. In return, Washington lifted some of its half-century-old economic sanctions on North Korea.

Those talks are to resume next month when a senior North Korean official, yet to be designated by Pyongyang, meets in Washington with administration officials.

U.S. concerns about North Korean missiles are high on the agenda.

Walpole told the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on international security, proliferation and federal services that if North Korea ends the freeze, it could test its long-range Taepo Dong-2 ballistic missile later this year.

A three-stage Taepo Dong-2 would be capable delivering a several-hundred-ton nuclear payload anywhere in the United States, Walpole said.

"We project that during the next 15 years the United States most likely will face Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) threats from Russia, China and North Korea, probably from Iran and possibly from Iraq," he said.

He said the threat from Russia, with some 4,500 nuclear warheads, "will continue to be the most robust and lethal," but that an unauthorized or accidental launch of a Russian missile "is highly unlikely so long as current technical and procedural safeguards are in place."

Walpole said the proliferation of shorter-range ballistic missiles, "driven primarily by North Korean No Dong sales, has created an immediate, serious and growing threat to U.S. forces, interests and allies in the Middle East and Asia."

Missiles Iran now has � with help from North Korea, the Russian and China � can reach deep into Turkey, for instance, he said. "That's NATO. We're trying to get this message out."

"North Korea continues to demonstrate a willingness to sell its missiles," Walpole said.

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the subcommittee chairman, said he was troubled that "North Korea appears ready to test its more capable Taepo Dong-2 at any time; Iran has already tested a medium-range ballistic missile and has begun developing longer-range weapons."

He added: "These worrisome developments reflect not just a determination by rogue states to acquire ballistic missiles, but the increasing availability of the technology required to develop these weapons."

Walpole stressed that the new intelligence estimates do not predict that countries such as North Korea, Iran or Iraq will seek to use such weapons, but only that they have the capability.