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N. Korea Rocket Launch Could Undo Pacts

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 30, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's plans to launch a rocket as early as this week in defiance of warnings threatens to undo years of fitful negotiations toward dismantling the regime's nuclear program.

The United States, South Korea and Japan have told the North that any rocket launch - whether it's a satellite or a long-range missile - would violate a 2006 U.N. Security Council Resolution prohibiting Pyongyang from any ballistic activity, and could draw sanctions.

North Korea said sanctions would violate the spirit of disarmament agreements, and said it would treat the pacts as null and void if punished for exercising its right to send a satellite into space.

"Even a single word critical of the launch" from the Security Council will be regarded as a "blatant hostile act," a spokesman with North Korea's foreign ministry said Thursday, according to the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency. "All the processes for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which have been pushed forward so far, will be brought back to what used to be before their start and necessary strong measures will be taken."

That would be a sharp reversal from June, when the North made a promising move toward disarmament, dramatically blowing up a cooling reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex.

But the regime routinely backtracks on agreements, refuses to abide by international rules and wields its nuclear program like a weapon when it needs to win concessions from Washington or Seoul, analysts say.

"History has shown them that the more provocative they are, the more attention they get. The more attention they get, the more they're offered," Peter M. Beck, a Korean affairs expert who teaches at American University in Washington and Yonsei University in Seoul, said Sunday.

Despite years of negotiations and impoverished North Korea's growing need for outside help, it's clear the talks have done little to curb the regime's drive to build - and sell - its atomic arsenal, experts say.

"If this is Kim Jong Il's welcoming present to a new president, launching a missile like this and threatening to have a nuclear test, I think it says a lot about the imperviousness of this regime in North Korea to any kind of diplomatic overtures," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview broadcast on "Fox News Sunday."

NORTH KOREA AND NUKES

North Korea, a notoriously secretive country, has been challenging the international community with its atomic ambitions since 1993, when the regime briefly quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty amid suspicions it was secretly developing atomic weapons.

1994: North Korea and the United States worked out an agreement that promised Pyongyang oil and two light water nuclear reactors if the country would give up its nuclear ambitions.

1998: North Korea fired a multistage Taepodong-1 missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.

1999: North Korea pledged to freeze long-range missile tests, but later threatened to restart its nuclear program and resume testing missiles.

2002: Pyongyang admitted to a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 agreement.

2003: North Korea withdrew again from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and announced it had reactivated its nuclear power facilities.

2003: In August, six nations - the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States - began negotiations on disarmament now known as the "six-party talks," eventually resulting in a landmark accord on Sept. 19, 2005.

2006: North Korea carried out a surprise 5 a.m. test-fire of six missiles, including its Taepodong-2 long-range missile, which U.S. and South Korean officials believe has the potential to strike Alaska.

The Associated Press

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