Text Fwd: With US, UK Backing, Japan Ready To Shoot Down Korean Missile

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http://en.rian.ru/world/20090313/120546430.html
Text Fwd: With US, UK Backing, Japan Ready To Shoot Down Korean Missile
Russian Information Agency Novosti
Fri Mar 13, 2009 5:47 am (PDT)

TOKYO - Japan is ready to intercept a North Korean rocket if it appears to threaten the country's security, Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said on Friday.

Pyongyang has notified global agencies of its plans to launch a communications satellite on April 4-8, indicating that the first stage of the carrier rocket would fall into the Sea of Japan and the second stage would splash down in the Pacific Ocean.

"If the rocket launch threatens to harm our country in any way, we will take decisive countermeasures," Nakasone said, adding that Japan would certainly "take up the issue at the UN Security Council."

The communist state announced plans last month to launch a satellite using a three-stage rocket from the newly constructed Musudan-ri launch pad on the country's northeast coast.
....
In 2002, Pyongyang and Tokyo agreed to a moratorium on missile tests, but the secretive regime has continued research on ballistic missile technology.

In 2005 North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons and in July 2006 test-launched a Taepodong-2 long-range missile and later staged an underground test of a nuclear device.

The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1718 on October 14, 2006, which forbids North Korea from conducting further nuclear tests or launches of ballistic missiles.

"Even if it is a satellite launch, as North Korea insists, it will be a violation of a UN Security Council resolution. The United States and Britain share our opinion [on this issue]," Nakasone said.

Some analysts believe, though, the impoverished country is not capable of developing a domestic space program, and that the planned rocket launch is simply an attempt to draw the attention of U.S. President Barack Obama's new administration to the issue of the stalled six-party talks on North Korea's controversial nuclear program.

The six-nation talks, involving North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States, were launched in 2003 after Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
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* Related blog *

http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2009/03/spaced-out.html
Friday, March 13, 2009
SPACED OUT

‘In the hotel room I turned on the TV and found CNN just as they were reporting on Japan's threats to shoot the North Korean missile launch out of the sky. You should know that if Japan does try to do such a provocative thing they will use an Aegis destroyer outfitted with "missile defense" systems on-board. Of all the MD programs it is the Aegis system that has had the most success in the testing phase. It was an Aegis destroyer that the US used last year to knock out the falling military satellite that was supposed to be a danger to the Earth. (It was later disclosed, but not widely reported, that the hydrazine fuel on that military satellite was nearly used up as it fell to Earth. Clearly an anti-satellite test and not about protecting the planet as the Pentagon claimed at the time.) CNN said that North Korea is set to launch their rocket around April 1 - our Global Network space organizing conference in South Korea will be mid-April so we are walking into a firestorm in that region.

My question again is what right does Japan (and the US who is of course encouraging Japan's aggressive behavior) have to tell another nation when they can and cannot launch rockets? The US does it all the time. I hope the public is not falling for the bravado and is seeing the glaring hypocrisy here.’