WASHINGTON: The US has deployed two warships with anti-missile capabilities in the waters off Japan as tensions mount over North Korea’s plans to test-fire a long-range ballistic missile capable of striking Alaska, while President Barack Obama announced he will meet with South Korea’s leader at the upcoming G-20 summit.
The deployment comes as America, Japan and South Korea threaten North Korea with ‘serious consequences’ if it proceeds with plans to conduct the missile test in defiance of a 2006 UN resolution.
North Korea, which informed international agencies of its plan to fire the missile between April 4 and 8, says the launch is a “satellite test” which it is entitled to make under international law. The United States, Japan and South Korea believe the launch is a cover for testing long-range ballistic missile technology. Japan reacted by threatening to shoot down the missile if it crosses over Japanese territory, a move which Pyongyang has already said it would consider an “act of war.”
Recent satellite imagery has shown that North Korea has now assembled the Taepodong-2 missile on a launch pad in the country’s northeast. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned any launch would threaten to end the six-party talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
The talks have been stalled since December in a dispute over how to verify its disarmament.
“This provocative action, in violation of the United Nations mandate, will not go unnoticed and there will be consequences,” Clinton told reporters during a visit to Mexico City, warning that the US would put the issue before the UN Security Council for additional sanctions. North Korea retaliated Tuesday saying if the United States pushed for sanctions in response to its planned rocket launch, it would quit the already stalled talks on ending its nuclear weapons program.
A US Navy spokesman said the two destroyers — the USS McCain and USS Chafee — equipped with Aegis technology capable of tracking and destroying missiles had left Sasebo port in southwestern Japan. The approach launch is typical of the brinkmanship of North Korean diplomacy, analysts say, relations on the Korean Peninsular are said to be at their lowest ebb for a decade.
They say that for North Korea, a country that hardly has enough money to feed its own people, the costly “satellite” program is nothing but a disguise for testing its long-range ballistic missile technology, as launching a satellite and a ballistic missile uses the same technology. It is unclear if China, Pyongyang’s only major ally which has held talks with senior figures from both North and South Korea last week, would support a US move to deepen sanctions.
Most experts do not think the planned launch poses any immediate threat to the region, other than the potential for pieces of the rocket to hit something when it drops. While even a failed test would yield valuable data for the North, it would be a major embarrassment for the regime. Its previous launch of the Taepodong-2 three years ago, with an estimated range of 4,160 miles, fizzled out after a few seconds in the air.
Frank Jannuzi, a staff member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, has urged the Obama administration not to overreact to a North Korean missile test.
In a seminar organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., March 23, he advised reviving missile talks with North Korea in a bid to solve the issue. “Overreaction would be shooting down the missile, taking out the missile from the launch pad, or suspending and terminating the six-party talks,” he said.
He continued, “If North Korea would not deploy, would not export, would not produce long-range missiles, it’s cheaper than keeping an aircraft carrier to shoot it down, cheaper than keeping national missile defense in Alaska.”
North Korea’s Taepodong-2 missile is theoretically capable of reaching Alaska and Hawaii.
Jannuzi suggested troubleshooting via the resumption of dialogue, adding Secretary Clinton also talked about the “need to have a conversation about missiles” with the North.
North Korea also continues to hold two Korean-American journalists who it arrested over a week ago after they strayed across its border with China while on a reporting assignment. They were transferred to the country’s capital Pyongyang for interrogation, according to reports, as tension mounts over the North’s plans to test-fire a long-range rocket next week.
President Obama, meanwhile, has decided to hold a bilateral meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak during the G20 economic summit in London next week, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.
Among other leaders Obama will meet one-on-one in London are British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Gibbs added. The summit between Lee and Obama is the first of its kind since Obama came into office in January. Lee took office in February last year.
