A week after test-firing a missile, North Korea said yesterday that it has the right to develop and deploy missiles as a means of self-defense.
North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) accused the US and Japan of using the alleged threat from North Korean missiles as a pretext to prepare for an attack. The accusation comes amid tension over the North's nuclear development.
The US and Japan "are trying to make an excuse for staging a pre-emptive attack," KCNA said. The report was monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
US officials have said they have no plans to invade North Korea, but are growing increasingly concerned about the North's reactivation of a nuclear reactor that is part of a suspected weapons program.
"The development and deployment of missiles is a sovereign right and is aimed at strengthening self-defense capabilities," KCNA said.
North Korea launched an anti-ship missile into the sea off its east coast on the eve of the inauguration of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Feb. 24.
US and South Korean officials played down the launch, saying the missile was small and conventional. However, there are fears that North Korea could test the long-range Taepodong-2 rocket, a more advanced rocket than the one it fired over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998.
US defense experts believe that the missile, if deployed, could deliver a payload of several hundred pounds as far as Alaska or Hawaii, and a lighter payload to the western half of the continental US.
Missile exports are a major source of hard currency for impoverished North Korea.
In Seoul, a South Korean Unification Ministry official said on condition of anonymity that the international construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea had slowed because of the nuclear standoff with the North.
It was the first South Korean acknowledgment since the nuclear dispute began in October that construction of the reactors was in jeopardy.
The official was referring to a 1994 agreement under which a US-led consortium was to build the power-generating reactors in exchange for the freezing of North Korea's nuclear facilities.
The deal unraveled late last year when US officials said the North acknowledged it had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 deal. Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments, which were part of the agreement, and North Korea responded by moving to reactivate its frozen facilities.
Also yesterday, 105 North Korean civilian leaders left Seoul to return home after joint celebrations of the March 1 anniversary of a 1919 Korean revolt against Japanese colonialists.
RSS