AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
Washington: North Korea does not appear to be preparing a second long-range Taepodong-2 missile for launch, but it could fire more shorter-range missiles to stay at the center of world attention, US officials said Thursday.
NBC News reported late Wednesday, citing unidentified US intelligence officials, that a second Taeopodong-2 missile was in “the final stages of assembly.”
Officials did not discount the report, and one noted that there were other reports from the region pointing to a second North Korean long-range missile.
But other US officials said there were no indications that a Taepodong-2 launch was imminent.
“Just look at the process. You have to get it out there, you have to get it up, you have to match it, you've got to fuel it. We're looking at a minimum of days, if not weeks,” said a US defense official.
“There's no indications of preparations of a second launch,” he said.
A third US official said North Korea may make good on threats to continue the missile tests by launching shorter-range Nodong or Scud-C missiles, but not the longer-range Taepodong-2 so soon after a test failure.
“You've got to take into consideration that they had a catastrophic failure of their last launch, and does it make sense to roll another out and pop it off,” the official said.
“They need to calculate that if there's a problem we experienced for the last one, could there be a problem for another one?” he said.
“Chances are they may pop off another of these small ones to keep themselves at the center of attention,” the official said.
“It doesn't seem likely in the near term that they would touch off another of these big ones either until they figure out what went wrong, or two, it's just the nature of the vehicle itself that it takes time to get it up,” he said.
North Korea ended a self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile tests on Tuesday by launching a Taepodong-2 along with six shorter-range Nodong and Scud-type missiles.
It had last tested a long-range missile in 1998, when it stunned the world by firing a Taepodong-1 over Japan and into the Pacific.
US officials said the three-stage Taepodong-2, which was estimated to be capable of hitting parts of the United States, failed after 42 seconds in flight.
The cause “could have been engine or control problem failures,” the US defense official said.
The United States has said the missile failed after about 40 seconds in flight.
But a senior South Korean intelligence official in Seoul said Thursday the missile was in the air for seven minutes, including 42 seconds of normal flight, before landing in the Sea of Japan.
The US defense official said the missile continued to burn after it failed and was in the air “upwards of two minutes.”
A spokesman for the US Northern Command said it was premature to give an exact timeline of the Taepodong launch.
“What we're saying is that it failed less than a minute into its flight,” said Mike Kucharek, the command spokesman. “It's entirely possible it failed in its trajectory but continued to burn in its descent.”
But Kucharek said the South Koreans may have confused the Taepodong-2 with a shorter-range missile that flew for a longer time.
