Report: North Korea 'not bound by missile test moratorium'
North Korea declared today it is free to conduct missile tests, saying it is not bound by prior agreements to refrain from testing and that outsiders do not have right to interfere, a news report said.
“This issue concerns our autonomy. Nobody has a right to slander that right,” Kyodo News agency quoted North Korean Foreign Ministry official Li Byong-dok as saying.
Speaking to Japanese reporters in North Korea, Li said his country’s actions are not bound by the joint declaration made at international nuclear disarmament talks last year or an earlier missile moratorium agreed to by Tokyo and Pyongyang in 2002.
Li said his remarks represented Pyongyang’s official line on the matter, Kyodo reported.
An agreement reached at six-party nuclear disarmament talks in September does not specifically address missile tests by the North, although negotiators pledged to work towards establishing peace in the region. The six countries participating in the talks – the two Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US - also agreed to work toward normalising relations.
North Korea and Japan also agreed in 2002 to place a moratorium on missile tests.
Japan has been at the forefront of international concern that North Korea may be planning to test a long-range missile. North Korea is reportedly preparing for a test launch of a missile that could reach the US, and though the international community has urged it to abandon the plans, Pyongyang has shown no sign of backing down.
The North has abided by a self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile tests since 1999.
There was nothing in today’s Kyodo report to explain Pyongyang’s declaration.
Amid rising tensions in the region over a potential launch, the US staged massive war games in the western Pacific Ocean with 22,000 troops and three aircraft carriers. The US ambassador to South Korea conveyed Washington’s concerns over a launch to former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who plans to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il next week.
There were conflicting reports about whether a missile launch was imminent.
A Japanese TV report today said satellite images show the North was still fuelling its missile, because fuelling vehicles have been spotted around the suspected launch site in the country’s northeast. But workers spotted near the head of the missile yesterday weren’t visible today, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said, citing US military sources in Japan.
A US official in Washington said yesterday that US intelligence indicated that North Korea had finished fuelling its long-range missile. However, Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Jinen Nagase said today that Japan could not confirm that fuelling was complete.
South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, believes North Korea hasn’t yet completed fuelling because the 40 fuel tanks seen around a launch site weren’t enough to fuel a projectile estimated at 65 tons, Yonhap news agency reported, quoting politicians who attended an intelligence briefing.
There have also been varying expert comments on whether the completion of fuelling would mean a launch was imminent or whether Pyongyang could wait up to a month. Siphoning the fuel back out of a missile is believed to be difficult.
South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon said it appeared some rockets had been assembled but that the North’s intentions were unclear.
If the North is “really able to carry nuclear warheads by long-range missile, that would create serious security problems for the international community,” Ban told reporters in Geneva, where he is attending international meetings.
North Korea lashed out today at the US for its missile defence plans, which it said would “touch off a space war in the long run,” the North’s Minju Joson newspaper wrote in a commentary, according to the country’s Korean Central News Agency.
The North also criticised Japan. The Pentagon earlier this month said Tokyo was set to buy shipborne missiles and associated equipment from the US to upgrade its missile defence system.
The North claimed Tokyo’s new missiles showed an intent to become “a military giant,” the North’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in commentary carried by KCNA.
South Korea urged its neighbour to abandon a long-range missile launch or face grave consequences.
“Seoul explained to North Korea the serious repercussions a missile launch would bring and strongly demanded that test fire plans be scrapped,” ruling Uri Party spokesman Woo Sang-ho said today in a statement.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday in Washington that test-launching the missile – believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a firing range experts estimate could be up to 9,300 miles – would be a “very serious matter and, indeed, a provocative act.”
North Korea claims it has nuclear weapons, but isn’t believed to have a design that would be small and light enough to top a missile. The North has boycotted international nuclear talks since last November.
China, North Korea’s staunchest ally, urged calm.
“We hope that under the current circumstances, relevant parties can do more in the interest of regional stability and peace,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.
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