US says North Korea tests provocative

By Jonathan Thatcher

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea lashed out at Japan on Friday
for imposing sanctions after it test-fired missiles this week,
but the United States said even China, the communist state’s
closest ally, considered the launch a provocative act.

South Korea however announced it would hold ministerial
talks with the North as scheduled next week, the first
high-level contact with Pyongyang since the tests.

The cabinet-level talks are slated to run from July 11 to
July 14 in the South Korean port city of Pusan, the South’s
Unification Ministry said.

South Korea has said its ties with the North have been
strained by Pyongyang’s missile tests, but it has called for
diplomacy in the crisis.

U.S. envoy Christopher Hill, visiting Asia to press
Washington’s case that Pyongyang must be brought to heel, said
in Beijing that there was a consensus that the tests were
provocative.

“There is broad agreement on the fact that what the DPRK
did is really a provocative act, and that we all need to speak
with one voice,” he said after talks with Chinese officials.

Later, after arriving in South Korea, he said: “We
shouldn’t have business as usual with a country that’s been
firing off missiles like this in this rather reckless way.”

“I think the ROK (South Korea) understands that,” he added,
referring to Seoul’s policy of engagement with Pyongyang.

But Hill did not appear to have made progress in U.S.
attempts to push through U.N. sanctions on North Korea, which
have been hamstrung because of opposition from Russia and
China.

Xinhua news agency quoted State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan as
telling Hill merely that Beijing would “keep close contact with
concerned sides to preserve peace and stability in the Korean
peninsula, realize denuclearization there and push forward the
six-party talks on the Korean peninsula nuclear issue.”

Japan’s Kyodo news agency said that China — about the
nearest the reclusive communist state has to an international
ally — had drafted a U.N. Security Council “statement” in a
bid to counter efforts to pass a stronger resolution.

The last time North Korea fired a missile, in 1998, the
Security Council ended up issuing a tepid statement that did
not chastise Pyongyang or lead to sanctions.

STRONGER ACTION

Defying near-universal condemnation of its latest firings,
North Korea has vowed to carry out more launches and has said
it will use force if the international community tries to stop
it.

On Friday, it threatened “stronger actions” against Japan
– which proposed the resolution after the missiles splashed
into the sea off its west coast — if its sanctions were not
lifted.

Japan has banned a North Korean ferry from entering its
ports for six months as part of a package of initial sanctions.

“This may force us to take stronger physical actions,”
Kyodo news agency quoted Song Il-ho, North Korea’s ambassador
in charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, as
saying.

Asked by Japanese reporters in Pyongyang to elaborate, he
said: “I leave that to your imagination.”

North Korea’s councillor at the U.N. mission in Geneva,
Choe Myong-nam, told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that
Wednesday’s volley of missiles were “not an attack on someone”
and defended Pyongyang’s right to such launches.

“From an international point of view, it is not fair to say
who can do one thing and who can’t,” Choe said. “The same
applies to possessing nuclear weapons.”

In February 2005, North Korea said it possessed nuclear
weapons. Since then, it has threatened several times to bolster
its nuclear arsenal to counter what it sees as U.S. hostility.

Six-party talks with Pyongyang to have it scrap its nuclear
programs have stalled since late last year.

North Korea’s state media called its launch of at least
seven missiles a success that reflected the country’s military
prowess.

But the most powerful of the missiles — the Taepodong-2,
which military analysts say might be able to reach Alaska —
reportedly fizzled out after about 40 seconds in the air.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted the country’s
defense minister as saying on Friday that Pyongyang may have
moved a second long-range missile to a launch site.

Some analysts say North Korea was trying to remind the
world that the risks of conflict were serious on the Korean
peninsula, the Cold War’s last frontier and home to some 30,000
U.S. troops.

North Korea has for years been trying to draw Washington
into direct talks, seeking a grand deal to end the technical
state of war on the peninsula that has persisted since the
1950-53 Korea War ended in an armed truce instead of a peace
treaty.

President Bush has however rejected what many believe North
Korea’s isolated leader Kim Jong-il really wants — direct
talks between U.S. and North Korean officials.

(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Jack Kim in
SEOUL, Isabel Reynolds in TOKYO and Steve Holland in
WASHINGTON)