US: North Korea may launch new missiles
The US said today North Korea may be planning more long-range missile launches as the communist nation threatened to retaliate against punitive United Nations sanctions.
Washington warned the US would respond quickly to any moves that threatened America or its Asian allies.
“We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in Asia – or on us,” US defence secretary Robert Gates said at a regional defence meeting in Singapore.
With tensions rising, Pyongyang punctuated its barrage of rhetoric with yet another short-range missile launch yesterday – the sixth this week.
Perhaps more significantly, officials in Washington said there were indications of increased activity at a site used to fire long-range missiles. The officials spoke anonymously because methods of gathering information about North Korea are sensitive.
US spy satellites detected signs the North was preparing to transport a long-range missile by train to its north-eastern Musudan-ni launch pad, an official at South Korea’s defence ministry said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the latest test launch was a surface-to-air missile designed to defend against aircraft or other missile attacks. It said the missile was believed to be a modified version of the Russian SA-5.
The nuclear test and flurry of missile launches, coupled with the rhetoric from Pyongyang that it would not honour a 1953 truce ending the fighting in the Korean War, have raised tensions in the region and heightened concerns that the North may provoke a skirmish along the border or off its western coast – the site of deadly clashes in 1999 and 2002.
But officials said the heavily fortified border remained calm and Mr Gates said the situation did not warrant any more troops to beef up the 28,000 US forces already in South Korea.
But North Korea remained strident.
“There is a limit to our patience,” its foreign ministry said in a statement carried on the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“The nuclear test conducted in our nation this time is the Earth’s 2,054th nuclear test. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council have conducted 99.99% of the total nuclear tests.”
North Korea said it conducted the test in self-defence. It says the US is planning a pre-emptive strike to oust the regime of leader Kim Jong Il and warned it would not accept sanctions or other punitive measures being discussed by the security council.
“If the UN Security Council makes a further provocation, it will be inevitable for us to take further self-defence measures,” the foreign ministry said.
The draft of a UN resolution being negotiated in response to the North’s second nuclear test calls on all countries to immediately enforce sanctions imposed after the North’s first test in 2006.
They include a partial arms embargo, a ban on luxury goods, and ship searches for illegal weapons or material. The sanctions have been sporadically implemented, with many of the 192 UN member states ignoring them.
The partial draft would have the council condemn the North’s May 25 nuclear test “in the strongest terms, in flagrant violation and disregard” of the 2006 resolution.
