North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii early next month, a Japanese news report said yesterday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program.
The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 6,500km, would be launched from North Korea’s Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.
The report cited an analysis by the Japanese defense ministry and intelligence gathered by US reconnaissance satellites.
The missile launch could come between July 4 and July 8, the paper said.
While the newspaper speculated the Taepodong-2 could fly over Japan and toward Hawaii, it said the missile would not be able to hit Hawaii’s main islands, which are about 7,200km from the Korean Peninsula.
A spokesman for the Japanese defense ministry declined to comment on the report. South Korea’s defense ministry and the National Intelligence Service said they could not confirm it.
Tension on the divided Korean Peninsula has spiked since the North conducted its second nuclear test on May 25 in defiance of repeated international warnings. The regime declared on Saturday it would bolster its nuclear programs and threatened war in protest of UN sanctions taken for the nuclear test.
US officials have said the North has been preparing to fire a long-range missile capable of striking the western US. In Washington on Tuesday, General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would take at least three to five years for North Korea to pose a real threat to the US west coast.
US President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met in Washington on Tuesday for a landmark summit in which they agreed to build a regional and global “strategic alliance” to persuade North Korea to dismantle all its nuclear weapons. Obama declared North Korea a “grave threat” to the world and pledged that the new UN sanctions on the communist regime will be aggressively enforced.
In a rare move, leaders of Russia and China used their meetings in Moscow on Wednesday to pressure the North to return to the nuclear talks and expressed “serious concerns” about tension in the Korean Peninsula.
The joint appeal appeared to be a signal that Moscow and Beijing are growing impatient with Pyongyang’s stubbornness. Northeastern China and Russia’s Far East both border North Korea, and Pyongyang’s unpredictable actions have raised concern in both countries.
After meetings at the Kremlin, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) joined Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in urging a peaceful resolution of the Korean standoff and the “swiftest renewal” of the now-frozen talks involving their countries as well as North and South Korea, Japan and the US.
“Russia and China are ready to foster the lowering of tension in Northeast Asia and call for the continuation of efforts by all sides to resolve disagreements through peaceful means, through dialogue and consultations,” they said.
The comments — contained in a lengthy statement that discussed other global issues — included no new initiatives, but it appeared to be carefully worded to avoid provoking Pyongyang. In remarks after their meetings, Medvedev made only a brief reference to North Korea, and Hu did not mention it.
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