June 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration said it would resist any attempt by North Korea to tie the status of two U.S. journalists imprisoned in that country to disputes over nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.

“Their detainment is not something that we’ve linked to other issues, and we hope the North Koreans don’t do that either,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said at a briefing today. “I think this is a humanitarian issue and these women are innocent and should be released to their families.”

North Korea sentenced Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years of “reform through labor” for illegally crossing the country’s border while investigating the plight of refugees from the closed and impoverished state.

The two were found guilty of the “grave crime they committed against the Korean nation,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. The Central Court verdict was announced after a four-day trial ended today.

Gibbs said he wasn’t aware of any effort by North Korea to link the women’s fate to other issues.

“In North Korea, nothing is separated from politics,” said Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation in Washington.

‘Official Message’

If the U.S. does send an envoy to ask the North Koreans to release Lee and Ling, “the first question the North Koreans will ask is, what is the official message from the Obama administration” on the nuclear issue, Snyder said in an interview.

“Talk of an envoy is premature, because what first has to happen is the framework for negotiations on a potential release,” Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, said on NBC Television today. Richardson went to North Korea in 1996 to secure the release of an American arrested after swimming to North Korea across the Yalu River from China.

The man, who was charged with being a spy, was released after his parents paid a $5,000 fine.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. urged North Korea to release the two journalists immediately on humanitarian grounds.

“We’re engaged in all possible ways through every possible channel to secure their release,” she said.

Detained Along Border

The two women were detained along the China border in March while reporting for San Francisco-based Current TV, co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. North Korea announced the decision as it warned ships away from an area off its northeastern coast for three weeks, indicating it may be preparing to test-fire missiles.

Baek Seung Joo, an analyst at the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses, said in an interview that North Korea wants to use the journalists to win concessions from the U.S. in negotiations over its nuclear weapons and energy programs.

If the North Koreans are using the journalists as a bargaining chip, they may have miscalculated, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio.

“This could be seen as such a heinous act that, in fact, it will set back any prospects of a good offer to them on the negotiating front,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Gore, Kalee Kreider, referred all questions to the State Department.

Sanctions Sought

The U.S., Japan and South Korea are pushing for sanctions against North Korea in the United Nations Security Council following its atomic test May 25. Kim Jong Il’s regime has also said the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War no longer applies and has test-fired rockets in a show of defiance. South Korea has deployed a combat ship to its maritime border with North Korea and vowed last week to send fighter jets in the event of a clash.

The sentencing of the two journalists will complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to pressure North Korea, said Snyder of the Asia Foundation.

“The journalists showed up in North Korea at just the wrong time,” he said.

Progress is being made in the UN Security Council toward imposing additional financial sanctions, an arms embargo and other measures “against North Korea with the full support of China and Russia,” Clinton said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program yesterday.

Sponsors of Terrorism

The U.S. is “going to look at” putting North Korea back on its list of international sponsors of terrorism, she said.

South Korea joined a U.S.-led initiative last month aimed at stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction by seizing shipments. North Korea said the move was an act of war and vowed “prompt and strong military strikes” in response to any attempt to seize its vessels.

If North Korea were to launch missiles at a South Korean vessel, the South would respond with strikes on “land, sea and air,” the chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told President Lee Myung Bak on June 6, according to a statement from his office.

North Korea and South Korea remain technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter S. Green in New York at psgreen@bloomberg.net; Roger Runningen in Washington rrunningen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 8, 2009 19:21 EDT