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North Korea Missile Tests Don’t Qualify as Terrorism, U.S. Says |
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administrator |
DATE |
2009-06-04 13:48:38 |
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North Korea Missile Tests Don’t Qualify as Terrorism, U.S. Says
By Paul Tighe and Heejin Koo
North Korea’s missile launches don’t qualify as acts that would allow the U.S. to return the communist country to a list of nations sponsoring terrorism, the State Department said.
“There’s a legal requirement” to list a country, spokesman Philip Crowley said at a briefing in Washington yesterday. “What we’ve seen so far, I don’t think meets that legal test.”
North Korea tested six short-range missiles last week after carrying out a nuclear bomb test May 25. The regime is preparing to launch at least three medium-range missiles and a ballistic rocket, according to South Korean media reports.
The Bush administration removed North Korea from the list in October after Kim Jong Il’s regime agreed to allow inspectors to verify its nuclear declaration as part of six-nation disarmament talks. Kim’s government pulled out of the negotiations and threatened to restart its Yongbyon reactor in April after the United Nations criticized a North Korean ballistic missile test that month.
The U.S. may apply sanctions to listed countries under laws that restrict foreign assistance, ban defense exports and sales and impose financial and other restrictions. Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria are designated as state sponsors of terrorism.
Two U.S. journalists are scheduled to go on trial today in Pyongyang after they were detained in March for allegedly entering the country illegally from China. President Barack Obama said in a statement on May 1 he was “especially concerned” about the pair.
Tensions Rise
The U.S. is looking for ways to “help North Korea understand it has obligations under international law,” Crowley said, according to a State Department transcript. “We are looking to North Korea to return to a process” and fulfill its obligations toward achieving a denuclearized Korean peninsula.
The missile and bomb tests increased tensions on the peninsula, with South Korea’s Defense Ministry saying yesterday it sent a warship to the maritime border with North Korea. South Korea is moving attack helicopters and howitzers to its western sea border, according to the country’s Yonhap News.
“In the end they will see that having dialogue is in their interest,” Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative on the country, said yesterday in Seoul at a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Wi Sung Lac. “I don’t think it’s useful to try to persuade them to do what they don’t want to do.”
‘Effective Dialogue’
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, also visiting Seoul yesterday, said North Korea needs to realize it’s on the wrong path.
“We are prepared, if they are prepared to change course, to enter effective dialogue that will really lead to complete and verifiable denuclearization of the peninsula,” said Steinberg, deputy to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
China, North Korea’s closest ally, agreed last week with the U.S., Japan and Russia to work toward a UN Security Council resolution to censure North Korea for its tests.
Russia supports a call for a “serious” new Security Council resolution condemning North Korea, as well as consideration of mechanisms to “restrain” the country’s nuclear program, President Dmitry Medvedev said.
Russia expects North Korea to return to the six-party talks “because there’s no other solution to this problem,” Medvedev said in a June 1 interview with CNBC.
North Korea will boost “self-defense capabilities in the face of the U.S. and its supporting forces that are trying to crush and isolate” the country, according to a report carried two days ago by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Resource from www.bloomberg.com |
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