Seoul: Unfazed by international anger at its second nuclear bomb test, a defiant North Korea was said Saturday to be preparing to launch a long-range missile.
The United States stressed it would never accept the North as a nuclear-armed state and warned that more atomic tests could spark an arms race in East Asia.
“A train carrying a long-range missile has been spotted at the weapons research centre near Pyongyang,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted an intelligence source as saying.
The source said it was expected to take about two weeks before the North places the missile on a launch pad and prepares it for firing.
Two defence officials in Washington said Friday that US satellite photos had shown vehicle activity at two launch sites in the North, one in the west and one in the east.
The movements resembled work done before the North fired a long-range rocket on April 5, the officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Diplomats at the United Nations Security Council are discussing a new resolution which could impose new sanctions to punish the North for Monday’s nuclear test — its second since 2006.
Pyongyang says it will take “additional self-defence measures” in response to any sanctions.
“If the UN Security Council (UNSC) provokes us, our additional self-defence measures will be inevitable,” its foreign ministry said Friday.
“The world will soon witness how our army and people stand up against oppression and despotism by the UNSC and uphold their dignity and independence.”
The North has further fuelled tensions in the past week by launching six short-range missiles, renouncing the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 and threatening possible attacks on South Korea.
Analysts believe ailing leader Kim Jong-Il is trying to bolster his authority to prepare for an eventual succession.
They say the North is not interested in further disarmament negotiations unless it is accepted as a nuclear-armed state.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates insists that will not happen.
“The policy of the United States has not changed. Our goal is complete and verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, and we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state,” he told a Singapore security conference.
“North Korea’s nuclear programme and actions constitute a threat to regional peace and security,” Gates said, adding they pose “the potential for some kind of an arms race here in this region.”
South Korean and US forces on the peninsula are on heightened alert for any border clashes.
The North walked out of six-nation nuclear disarmament talks after the Security Council condemned its April 5 rocket launch and tightened existing sanctions.
The United States is sending two diplomats to consult the other nations negotiating with the North — China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
Stephen Bosworth, the special envoy on North Korea, and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg will head Sunday to Tokyo and later visit China, South Korea and Russia, the State Department said.
Kim Jong-Il “is determined to go out with a bang and not a whimper,” US analyst Marcus Noland wrote in The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi.
“Severely weakened by a stroke last year, the emaciated Kim has been frenetically delivering ‘on-the-spot guidance,’ as if to reassure himself and his country that he is still in control.
“This week’s nuclear test was the most recent and grandiose move to seal his legacy.”
