South Korea warned North Korea yesterday to scrap any plans to launch its longest-range missile, saying this would violate UN resolutions passed after the last test in 2006.
Officials in Seoul and Washington said there were signs Pyongyang was preparing to test the Taepodong-2, which has a range of 6,700km and could theoretically target Alaska. The reports, based on satellite photos, come amid stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and rising inter-Korean tensions. The North has scrapped a non-aggression pact with the South and warned of possible conflict.
In what some analysts see as a message to the new US administration, Pyongyang has also staked out a tough negotiating position in the disarmament talks involving the US and four regional powers.
Seoul’s foreign ministry refused comment on reports of launch preparations but said any such move would breach UN Security Council resolutions.
“The UNSC in 2006 adopted Resolutions 1695 and 1718, expressing serious concerns over the North’s missile program and delivering a firm message,” spokesman Moon Tae-young told a briefing.
“If the North lobs a missile, it would constitute a clear breach of the UN resolution,” he said.
The US State Department has said any test would be “provocative.” The North carried out long-range missile tests in 1998 and 2006, sparking international condemnation. Experts disagree on whether it is technically capable of fitting the missiles with a nuclear warhead.
The Taepodong-2 launched in 2006 failed after 40 seconds, US officials said. A Seoul government source told Yonhap news agency the missile spotted recently was believed to be a modified version.
The last round of six-party talks ended in deadlock in December because of disagreements over ways to verify the North’s atomic disclosures.
Relations with South Korea soured last spring after conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office and rolled back the “sunshine” engagement policy of his liberal predecessors.
Lee linked major economic aid to denuclearization and said he would review summit pacts signed by North Korea and his predecessors. A US expert who visited Pyongyang last month described Lee’s stance on the summit deals as a “disastrous, historic mistake.”
Selig Harrison told a Washington think tank the posture served to “revive North Korean fears that South Korea, the United States and Japan want regime change and absorption.”
“They’re especially sensitive about this with Kim Jong-il ill,” Harrison said on Wednesday.
Leader Kim, who turns 67 this month, is widely reported to have suffered a stroke last August. Harrison said hawks have come to dominate defense policy since then.
“North Korea has suddenly adopted a much harder line [in six-party negotiations] than before and the question is why,” he said.
Though some analysts believed it was a “bargaining posture” aimed at the new US administration, Harrison stressed the fallout from the leader’s illness and political changes in South Korea as contributing factors.
The scholar, confirming earlier reports, said he believed Kim had a greatly reduced work schedule.
“He has turned over day-to-day management of domestic affairs to his brother-in-law Jang Song-taek and foreign affairs and defense policy is now largely in the hands of hawks in the National Defense Commission,” Harrison said.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS