US tells North Korea not to carry out nuclear test
Journalists leave the Unha-3 (Milky Way 3) rocket launch pad at the West Sea Satellite Launch Site during a guided media tour by North Korean authorities in the northwest of Pyongyang, April 8, 2012. — Reuters picWASHINGTON, April 10 — The United States yesterday urged North Korea not to conduct a nuclear test or launch a satellite, and called on China to exert its influence over its neighbour to try and ward off such “provocative actions”.
North Korea, which is pressing ahead with plans for a satellite launch despite US and regional appeals that it desist, is also preparing a third nuclear test, South Korean news reports said on Sunday.
Another nuclear test is bound to scare neighbours and infuriate the West, which has long sought to curb the North’s nuclear ambitions.
Jang Myong Jin, director of the West Sea Satellite Launch Site, introduces the launching process during the guided media tour. — Reuters picSouth Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted an unidentified intelligence source as saying North Korea was “clandestinely preparing a nuclear test” at the same location as the first two.
The State Department repeated its advice to the North not to launch a satellite, saying this would violate UN Security Council resolutions and a February 29 denuclearisation agreement.
“Our position remains: don’t do it,” said spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. “North Korea’s launch of a missile would be highly provocative, it would pose a threat to regional security and it would be inconsistent with its recent undertakings to refrain from any kind of long-range missile launches.”
Nuland told reporters a third North Korean nuclear test “would be equally bad if not worse”.
She declined comment on whether the United States also had reason to believe that the North might be preparing a nuclear test, saying she could not discuss intelligence matters.
North Korea, which three years ago pulled out of six-party disarmament talks on its nuclear programme, agreed in February to stop nuclear tests, uranium enrichment and long-range missile launches in return for food aid, opening the way to a possible resumption of the negotiations.
But that has all unravelled with the North’s rocket launch planned for this month, probably between Thursday and the following Monday. The North says it is merely sending a weather satellite into space, but South Korea and the United States say it is a ballistic missile test.
The United States has called on China, the closest that North Korea has to an ally, to exert such influence as it has with Pyongyang, a point Nuland made again yesterday.
“We believe, in particular, that China joins us in its interest in seeing a denuclearised Korean Peninsula and we are continuing to encourage China to act more effectively in that interest,” she said. — Reuters
