SEOUL – North Korea said yesterday that if the international community punished it for next month’s planned missile launch it would restart a nuclear plant that makes weapons grade plutonium.
The secretive state this week put a long-range missile in place for a launch which the United States warned would violate UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for past weapons tests.
The planned launch, seen by some countries as a disguised military exercise, is the first big test for US president Barack Obama in dealing with the prickly North, whose efforts to build a nuclear arsenal have long plagued ties with Washington.
North Korea warned that any action by the UN Security Council to punish it would be a “hostile act . . . All the processes for the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula . . . will be brought back to what used to be before their start and necessary strong measures will be taken,” the North’s foreign ministry spokesman said.
North Korea has frozen its aging nuclear reactor and started to take apart its Yongbyon atomic plant under a deal signed by regional powers in 2005 that called for economic aid and better diplomatic standing for the isolated North in return. Despite the agreement, the North carried out a nuclear test in 2006.
The South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo quoted a diplomatic source as saying the North could fire its Taepodong-2 missile, which has the range to hit US territory, by the weekend.
This is earlier than the April 4th to 8th timeframe Pyongyang announced for what it says is the launch of a satellite. “Technically a launch is possible within three to four days,” the Chosun Ilbo quoted a diplomatic source in Seoul as saying.
The US state department said top nuclear envoys from Japan, South Korea and the US will meet in Washington today in a signal of growing concern over the possible launch. A North Korean missile launch would risk international condemnation or “worse”, US director of national intelligence Dennis Blair said.
South Korea said the launch would be a serious challenge to security in north Asia, which accounts for one-sixth of the global economy.
On Wednesday, a US counter-proliferation official said that North Korea appeared to have positioned the rocket on its launch pad.
Another US official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said North Korea had placed together two stages of what is expected to be a three-stage rocket. Once it has been positioned, North Korea will need several days to fuel the rocket which could, in theory, carry a warhead as far as Alaska. The only previous test of the rocket in 2006 ended in failure when it blew apart seconds after lift-off.
South Korea plans to dispatch an advanced destroyer capable of tracking and shooting down missiles to waters off the east coast, Yonhap news agency quoted government sources as saying.
The planned launch and growing tension on the Korean peninsula are beginning to worry financial markets in the South, although so far there has been only minor impact. – (Reuters)