Japan and US warn N Korea on test

Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Aso and US envoy Thomas Schieffer met in Tokyo amid increasing speculation that Pyongyang is set to conduct a launch.

Officials believe that Pyongyang may be planning to test the Taepodong-2, a missile with a range of up to 6,000km.

Mr Schieffer urged North Korea not to take "provocative action".

Such a move would lead to further isolation from the international community, he said.

Mr Aso described the situation as serious and said that Japan had warned North Korea against going ahead with a test.

The message was sent via diplomatic channels in Beijing, according to Japanese media reports.

Site activity

The meeting followed reports in the regional media that North Korea was stepping up its work towards a test.

South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo reported that booster rockets had been loaded onto a launch pad and 10 fuel tanks moved to the site in the north-east of the country in preparation for a launch.

The information came from US and South Korean satellite images of activity at the site, the daily said, citing an unnamed government official.

A Japanese daily, the Sankei Shimbun, reported that the missile could be fired as early as Sunday, citing unnamed government officials.

Japan is acutely worried by this, says the BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo. The government says any launch would threaten the country's security.

North Korea last tested a long-range missile in 1998, when it fired the Taepodong-1 missile, with a range of 2,000 km, over northern Japan. The missile landed in the Pacific Ocean.

Diplomats say that North Korean technicians are going through the same procedures that were undertaken before the test in 1998.

A successful test of the Taepodong-2 would put parts of the US within striking distance of Pyongyang.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5090626.stm

NOT a good thing!

well if N korea decieds to start launching im pretty sure that theyd attack tokyo first :(

sux for me and like 20 million others

Washington on Friday warned Pyongyang not to proceed with a long-range missile test that North Korea may be planning to conduct as early as this weekend.

Sean McCormack, State department spokesman, said the US would view a test as a "provocative" act. Japan said a test of a long-range Taepodong-2 missile would violate a 2002 agreement between Pyongyang and Tokyo.

Shinzo Abe, chief cabinet secretary and a leading candidate to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister in September, told reporters: "If North Korea launches a missile that directly affects Japan's security, it would be a violation of the Pyongyang Declaration."

The declaration was signed when Mr Koizumi met Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, in North Korea in 2002. The agreement included a pledge to freeze indefinitely tests of missiles capable of reaching Japan, Mr Abe said.

His comments followed a report in the Financial Times on Friday that the US believed North Korean preparations for a possible long-range missile test had advanced significantly to the point where Pyongyang could launch a Taepodong-2 on "very short notice".

Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton, two Democrats on the Senate armed services committee, this week called on President George W. Bush to develop a strategy to deal with North Korea.

"We may be approaching the nightmare scenario in which our only option is to negotiate with a North Korea that can attack the US with a nuclear weapon instead of a North Korea that is still working towards that capability," the senators wrote in a letter to Mr Bush.

The US has been monitoring activity at a launch site in North Korea for weeks following indications that Pyongyang was preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile â?? which the US Defence Intelligence Agency estimates could potentially reach most parts of the US - for the first time.

In 1998, Pyongyang stunned the US and Japan by firing an intermediate range Taepodong-1 missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean.

While US intelligence shows test preparations are advanced, Washington does not know whether Mr Kim will go ahead with a politically inflammatory test.

Many analysts in Seoul say Pyongyang is unlikely to test because of the hardline response it would invite and the possibility that the technology could fail.

A US Senate aide said Pyongyang was probably trying to gain attention at a time when Washington has been predominantly focused on Iran.

The Pentagon has positioned military assets to deal with any launch, while US and South Korean officials have urged North Korea to abandon any test."We are currently trying to get all of the parties in the six-party talks process to send a strong message to North Korea to discourage them from launching," said a senior US official.South Korea is "bracing" for a possible missile launch, Ban Ki-moon, South Korea's foreign minister, said on Thursday."We are very concerned that international opinion is turning increasingly negative towards North Korea, especially as the six party talks are still in a deadlock," Mr Ban said. "North Korea should stop its plan, if there is any, to fire a missile and come back to the negotiating table."North Korea has a history of performing eye-catching stunts, and a South Korean government official said Pyongyang had political rather than military aims."I think they will be delighted to be attracting such publicity and with the idea that they can reverse their declining leverage to get out of the squeeze they are in," he said, referring to the difficulties Pyongyang is facing as Washington applies crippling financial sanctions.CUT FROM HEREThe Taepodong-2 is an untested two-, or three-, stage "integrated" missile. The three-stage version consists of a solid-fuel booster rocket strapped atop a Scud missile, which is in turn attached to a short-range Nodong missile. North Korea appears close to the position where it only needs to fuel the missile. Once it does, it would significantly increase the likelihood of a test since the move is dangerous and difficult to reverse.Vice-admiral Lowell Jacoby, then head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, last year told Congress that a three-stage version of the Taepodong-2 had the "theoretical capability [to] reach most of the continental US". But some experts doubt whether the missile has the range to hit the US and whether it can carry a significant payload. The US believes North Korea is trying to develop the technology to put a nuclear warhead on an ICBM that could reach the US, but has not yet succeeded.

source: msnbc

NK better be careful these neocons wouldnt mine sending a few nukes there way.