ON ALERT / JAPAN'S MISSILE DEFENSE SET
[PHOTO - This picture, released from North Korea's official
Korean Central News Agency on April 9, 2009, shows a Unha-2 rocket launch. The
country said it would launch another rocket into orbit mid April 2012. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images]
MANILA,
MARCH 25, 2012 (INQUIRER) The
Philippine and US militaries are coordinating to track the path of a planned
North Korean rocket launch, parts of which are expected to land off the
archipelago, an official said Saturday.
"The Philippine military is coordinating with its US counterpart in the
monitoring of the planned launch," Foreign Department spokesman Raul Hernandez
told Agence France-Presse.
His announcement came a day after the USS Blue Ridge, the flagship of the US
7th Fleet in the Pacific, arrived in Manila for a four-day visit.
Hernandez did not divulge details of the joint monitoring, but the allies
were expected to hold large-scale joint military exercises in the middle of
April to enhance cooperation in case of external threats.
"We continue to strongly urge the DPRK [North Korea] not to proceed with its
planned launch," Hernandez said.
"They should abide by the UN Security Council resolutions which explicitly
demand that they do not conduct any launch using ballistic missile technology."
Manila's defense chief, Voltaire Gazmin, said Friday the government needed US
help in tracking the rocket's path, with the poorly equipped Philippine military
not having the capability to do so by itself.
Pyongyang announced last week it would launch the rocket to place a satellite
in orbit between April 12 and 16, and insisted it was purely for space research.
But the United States and other nations see the launch as a disguised
ballistic missile test, and say that it would breach a UN ban on North Korean
missile launches.
A previous North Korean long-range rocket in 2009 flew over Japanese
territory and the boosters landed safely in waters off Japan.
Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs, said the rocket launch would impact "in an area roughly between
Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines," in a message to Australia's Foreign
Minister Bob Carr, according to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Barack Obama to visit DMZ amid concern over North Korean
rocket launch
President Barack Obama will visit the demilitarized zone that
separates North Korea from the South for the first time on Sunday.
The news came as the US, South Korea and Japan expressed concern over North
Korea's plan to put a satellite into orbit on a rocket.
North Korea's Committee for Space Technology announced on March 16 that the
country would send Kwangmyongsong-3, a polar-orbiting satellite, into space atop
the domestically manufactured Unha-3 rocket, Asia Times Online reported.
However, the three Western nations are concerned that North Korea's
rudimentary technology and limited experience in launching long-range rockets
might result in a "catastrophic failure" that could cause it to crash near South
Korean territory, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph.
They have also suggested that the launch of the Unha-3 rocket — scheduled for
mid-April as part of celebrations to mark the 100th birthday of Kim Il-sung,
North Korea's founder — is actually a test for a ballistic missile capable of
delivering a nuclear weapon, the paper reported.
The launch is to take place at the country's new aerospace facility at
Tongchang-ri, close to the border with China in the far north-west of the
country.
China has also expressed concern over the launch.
However, the Telegraph wrote, Pyongyang told International Civil Aviation
Organisation and the International Maritime Organisation that the rocket will
travel almost due south, with the propulsion stage of the rocket likely to fall
into waters around 80 miles off the South Korean coast.
The rocket will also fly over Japan and Taiwan, before falling into the ocean
an estimated 118 miles off the Philippines, the Telegraph wrote.
The US has warned North Korea that the rocket launch could jeopardize a
food-aid agreement reached with Pyongyang in early March.
Meanwhile, CNN reported that Obama's visit to the heavily fortified DMZ would
form part of a three-day trip to South Korea to participate in a summit meeting
about nuclear security in Seoul.
The DMZ is considered one of the most dangerous places on earth, according to
VOA, where heavily armed soldiers from North Korea and South Korea face each
other 24/7, their countries locked in a technical state of war since the Korean
War armistice in 1953.
VOA cited Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes as saying Tuesday that
the president's DMZ visit was mainly to show support for the more than 28,000 US
troops serving in Korea and to stress America's security alliance with South
Korea.
Japan prepares defenses against N. Korean rocket
Agence France-Presse 6:49 pm | Friday, March 23rd, 2012
[PHOTO - Far left) Two Japanese Maritime
Self-Defense Force's Aegis guided-missile destroyers, Kongo (front) and Chokai
(rear) head out to sea from their base in Sasebo in this photo taken on March
28, 2009. Japan is readying its missile defense systems…]
TOKYO — Japan on Friday readied its missile defense systems to shoot down a
North Korean rocket if it threatens the country, as the UN chief warned that
next month's launch could jeopardise food aid.
"I have ordered officials to prepare to deploy the PAC-3 and Aegis warships,"
Japan's Defence Minister Naoki Tanaka told reporters, referring to
surface-to-air missiles and destroyers carrying missiles.
The nuclear-armed North has announced it will launch a rocket in mid-April to
put a satellite into orbit, a move that the United States, South Korea and other
nations see as a pretext for a long-range missile test banned by the UN.
The move by North Korea's new leadership has set off alarm bells across the
region. The Philippines is calling for help from the United States to monitor
the rocket, part of which is expected to land off the archipelago.
Amid mounting tensions, North Korea's main ally China urged that "all parties
should keep calm and exercise restraint", while a special adviser to US
President Barack Obama warned any launch will generate a "strong response."
"If they go ahead anyway, we will want to work with our allies and partners
for a strong response," Gary Samore, arms control coordinator at the National
Security Council, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency in an interview.
The preparations by Japan, regularly the target of North Korean barbs, come
as world leaders including Obama prepare to meet in Seoul for a summit
officially focused on nuclear terrorism.
The North's atomic programme is expected to be the subject of discussion at
the talks on Monday and Tuesday, which are also to be attended by the leaders of
China, Japan and Russia.
Leading North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Friday again blasted the
upcoming summit as a "burlesque" and part of a South Korean smear campaign.
It said Seoul's rulers hope to use the event to escalate the "nuclear racket"
against the North and moves for a war against it.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who plans to raise the rocket launch at the
Seoul summit, said any launch could discourage international aid donors and
worsen North Korea's already dire humanitarian situation.
"Such an act would undermine recent positive diplomatic progress and, in its
effect on international donors, would likely worsen the humanitarian situation
inside the country," he said in a speech in Singapore.
Japan's surface-to-air interceptors would reportedly be deployed on the
southern island chain of Okinawa, over which Tokyo said the projectile may pass.
In a notice to the UN's International Maritime Organisation, North Korea has
said the first stage of the rocket will fall in international waters between
China and South Korea.
The second stage is expected to splash down just 190 kilometers (118 miles)
east of the northern Philippines.
North Korea insists it has the right to conduct what it calls a peaceful
satellite launch.
But Ban, a South Korean, said the rocket flight would be a "clear violation"
of UN Security Council resolutions and warned that the North already has a
"serious humanitarian crisis" on its hands.
The United States voiced doubt last week over whether it could provide its
own food aid to Pyongyang if it followed through on the launch, after an
apparent breakthrough deal with North Korea last month.
Washington had said it would deliver 240,000 tonnes of food aid to the North,
which remains hampered by food shortages after a devastating famine in the
1990s.
In return, Pyongyang agreed to a partial freeze on its nuclear programme, to
suspend missile and nuclear tests, and allow the return of UN atomic inspectors.
The Japanese defense minister, who met with US ambassador John Roos late
Thursday, said the two sides "reconfirmed to further strengthen Japan-US
cooperation, especially on the North Korean issue".
South Korea and Japan's nuclear envoys held talks in Seoul Friday over
possible steps to take if the launch goes ahead, Yonhap news agency quoted a
South Korean foreign ministry official as saying.
In 2009 Japan ordered missile-defence preparations before Pyongyang's last
long-range rocket launch, which brought UN Security Council condemnation and
tightened sanctions against the isolated communist state.
That rocket, which North Korea said was also aimed at putting a satellite
into orbit, passed over Japanese territory without incident or any attempt to
shoot it down.
Chief News Editor: Sol
Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE
NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS
ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE
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