| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Radio Free America" |
| Date: |
04 Jul 2006 03:30:49 PM |
| Object: |
North Korea fires missile, provokes U.S. on 4th of July! |
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/07/04/korea.missile/index.html
U.S. official: North Korea tests long-range missile
From Elise Labott and Justine Redman
CNN
Tuesday, July 4, 2006; Posted: 4:51 p.m. EDT (20:51 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- North Korea launched a long-range Taepodong-2
missile early Wednesday in an apparently unsuccessful test that failed
in flight, a senior State Department official said.
North Korea also tested at least two smaller missiles, U.S. sources told
CNN.
Both missiles were launched from a site other than the one intelligence
officials have watched for weeks ahead of the long-range missile test, a
senior State Department official said.
The United States, Japan and other countries have warned North Korea
against a long-range missile test, saying such a move would be
considered a provocation.
Washington and North Korea's Asian neighbors -- South Korea, China,
Russia and Japan -- have been trying to persuade North Korea to
dismantle its nuclear weapons program since 2002, but those talks have
stalled in recent months.
President Bush warned last week that the isolated Stalinist state would
face even further isolation if it launched the Taepodong-2, which U.S.
analysts fear is capable of reaching the western United States. (Full
story)
"The North Koreans have made agreements with us in the past, and we
expect them to keep their agreements," Bush said last month at the end
of a European Union summit.
"It should make people nervous when nontransparent regimes, that have
announced that they've got nuclear warheads, fire missiles," Bush said.
"This is not the way you conduct business in the world. This is not the
way that peaceful nations conduct their affairs."
The senior State Department official said the launches were timed to
coincide with the launch of the space shuttle Discovery from Florida,
calling it "a provocative act designed to get attention."
The North Koreans fired a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan in 1998, but
declared a moratorium on future tests in 1999.
Two senior State Department officials said Tuesday that fuel trucks had
departed the site where the Taepodong-2 sat on a launch paid, indicating
that a test may have been near.
On Monday, Pyongyang's state-run media carried a report accusing the
United States of harassing North Korea and vowing to respond to any pre-
emptive attack "with a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war
with a mighty nuclear deterrent." (Watch why North Korea is talking
about annihilating the U.S. -- 2:04)
The White House has dismissed that threat as "hypothetical." (Full
story)
Meanwhile, the Pentagon took steps to be ready for a possible military
response to a North Korean missile launch.
The U.S. Northern Command recently increased security measures at its
Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a
military official confirmed.
In other planning measures instituted in the past several days, Northern
Command, along with the Federal Aviation Administration, has put standby
commercial flight restrictions into place over Vandenberg Air Force Base
in California and Fort Greely, Alaska, where the U.S. interceptor
missiles are based.
--
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