Group items tagged

“It’s a setback,” Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks satellites and rocket launchings, said of the North Korean launching. He added that the North Koreans must now find and fix the problem. “The missile doesn’t represent any kind of near-term threat.”

The United States Northern Command, based in Colorado Springs, issued a statement on Sunday that portrayed the launching as a major failure. It based its information on a maze of federal radars, spy ships and satellites that monitor global missile firings.

The command emphasized that “no object entered orbit,” apparently a reference to both the rocket’s third stage as well as the supposed satellite.

North Korea’s public portrayal of the event as a complete success was similar in its celebratory tone to the happy note it struck in 1998 after having failed to loft a satellite into orbit.

A general rule of engineering is that failures reveal more than successes. If so, North Korea — which has now test-fired three long-range rockets, each time unsuccessfully — is learning a lot about limitations.

“It’s not unusual to have a series of failures at the beginning of a missile program,” Jeffrey G. Lewis, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a research group in Washington, said in an interview. “But they don’t test enough to develop confidence that they’re getting over the problems.”Dr. Lewis added that an influential 1998 report by Donald H. Rumsfeld, before he became secretary of defense in the Bush administration, argued that the North Korean rockets might be good enough to pose a threat to the United States, even without flight testing. “But given that both versions of the Taepodong-2 have failed now,” he said, “we have very little confidence in the reliability of the system.”

In August 1998, North Korea’s first attempt at launching a long-range rocket, the Taepodong-1, managed to scare Japan but failed to deliver a satellite to orbit. The troubles continued in July 2006 when its second test of a long-range missile, the Taepodong-2, ended in an explosion just seconds after liftoff.

"We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile...in the direction of Hawaii," Mr. Gates said. "We are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect American territory."

In another sign of America's mounting concern about North Korea, a senior defense official said the U.S. is tracking a North Korean vessel, the Kang Nam, suspected of carrying weapons banned by a recent United Nations resolution.

Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported Thursday that North Korea would launch a long-range Taepodong-2 missile at Hawaii from the Dongchang-ni site on the country's northwestern coast on or close to July 4.

Some U.S. officials have said satellite imagery shows activity at a North Korea testing facility that has been used in the past to launch long-range missiles. On a trip to Manila earlier this month, Mr. Gates said the U.S. had "seen some signs" that North Korea was preparing to launch a long-range missile.

many U.S. defense officials are highly skeptical that North Korea has a missile capable of reaching Hawaii, which is more than 4,500 miles away from North Korea.

North Korean long-range missiles have failed three previous tests in the past 11 years. In the most notable North Korean misfire, a Taepodong-2 missile that Pyongyang launched on July 4, 2006, imploded less than 35 seconds after taking off.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, would have to choose whether to attempt to shoot down the missile, a technically complicated procedure with no guarantee of success. An American failure would embarrass Washington, embolden Pyongyang and potentially encourage Asian allies like Japan to take stronger measures of their own against North Korea.

The senior defense official said the U.S. would seek to have the North Korean ship suspected of carrying banned arms searched before it reaches its final destination, believed to be Singapore.

The ship left North Korea on Wednesday. The official said U.S. or allied personnel wouldn't board the ship by force and would search the ship only with the permission of its crew.

North Korea has said it would view any efforts at interdiction as an act of war, and some U.S. officials worry North Korean vessels would use force to prevent U.S., Japanese or South Korean personnel from searching their ships, potentially sparking an armed confrontation.

Pyongyang's refusal to honor its agreements has persuaded the Obama administration that North Korea was unlikely to ever voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons. That has led the administration to reject the idea of offering North Korea additional aid in exchange for new North Korean vows to abide by agreements it has repeatedly abrogated.

Many Obama administration officials are also skeptical of reopening the so-called six-party talks with North Korea, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Instead, the administration is trying to persuade China to take a stronger line with North Korea, a putative ally that is deeply dependent on China. U.S. officials hope China will help search and potentially board suspicious North Korean vessels, but China has been noncommittal.

Asked if China had finally accepted U.S. assessments of the threat posed by North Korea, Mr. Gates demurred. "I think that remains to be seen," he said.

North Korea claimed the Taepodong-2 rocket put an experimental communications satellite into orbit, where it is collecting data and broadcasting the Song of General Kim Il-Sung and the Song of General Kim Jong-il.

But US, South Korean and Japanese scientists say the only broadcasts are likely to be from the bottom of the ocean because the satellite failed to reach orbit.

China, a historical ally of and food supplier to North Korea, has called on all sides to remain calm."Our position is that all countries concerned should show restraint and refrain from taking action that might lead to increased tension," Zhang Yesui, the Chinese ambassador to the UN, told reporters.

So far, however, the US and its allies have been unable to persuade China and Russia that the act was a breach of UN security council resolution 1718, passed after long-range missile and nuclear tests in 2006.

The resolution bans Pyongyang from activities related to a ballistic missile programme and calls on the international community to stop trading weapons and luxury goods with North Korea.

The advance in North Korea's ballistic missile technology will raise concerns that the country could one day be capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the US or western Europe.It is likely to interest potential buyers from Pakistan, Iran and Syria, who have sent observers to previous launches.

Russia described the North Korean rocket launch as "regrettable", but stopped short of confirming whether the launch had violated existing resolutions."Before embarking on any actions, we should understand the character of this launch because, at this particular moment, we do not have a clearcut picture," Igor Scherbak, the deputy Russian permanent UN representative, said.

The missiles' estimated 500km reach - although still technically short-range - brings most of South Korea withing striking distance, our correspondent says. Japanese and South Korean media have reported that North Korea may be preparing to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Pyongyang is banned from testing ballistic missiles under UN resolutions but launched a long-range rocket in April, which many governments saw as a thinly disguised test of Taepodong-2 missile technology.

There are fears that North Korea is trying to produce nuclear warheads small enough to put on missiles - but experts say this appears to be several years away.

“I’m tired of buying the same horse twice,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said last week while touring an antimissile site in Alaska that the Bush administration built to demonstrate its preparedness to destroy North Korean missiles headed toward the United States. (So far, the North Koreans have not successfully tested a missile of sufficient range to reach the United States, though there is evidence that they may be preparing for another test of their long-range Taepodong-2 missile.)

In France on Saturday, Mr. Obama referred to the same string of broken deals, telling reporters, “I don’t think there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilizing the region and we just react in the same ways.” He added, “We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation.”

While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe last week, several senior officials said the president’s national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the North would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world’s last Stalinesque regime.

Now, after examining the still-inconclusive evidence about the results of North Korea’s second nuclear test, the administration has come to different conclusions: that Pyonyang’s top priority is to be recognized as a nuclear state, that it is unwilling to bargain away its weapons and that it sees tests as a way to help sell its nuclear technology.

While Mr. Obama is willing to reopen the six-party talks that Mr. Bush began — the other participants are Japan, South Korea, Russia and China — he has no intention, aides say, of offering new incentives to get the North to fulfill agreements from 1994, 2005 and 2008; all were recently renounced.

While some officials privately acknowledged that they would still like to roll back what one called North Korea’s “rudimentary” nuclear capacity, a more realistic goal is to stop the country from devising a small weapon deliverable on a short-, medium- or long-range missile.

In conducting any interdictions, the United States could risk open confrontation with North Korea. That prospect — and the likelihood of escalating conflict if the North resisted an inspection — is why China has balked at American proposals for a resolution by the United Nations Security Council that would explicitly allow interceptions at sea. A previous Security Council resolution, passed after the North’s first nuclear test, in 2006, allowed interdictions “consistent with international law.” But that term was never defined, and few of the provisions were enforced.

North Korea has repeatedly said it would regard any interdiction as an act of war, and officials in Washington have been trying to find ways to stop the shipments without a conflict. Late last week, James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, visited Beijing with a delegation of American officials, seeking ideas from China about sanctions, including financial pressure, that might force North Korea to change direction.

“The Chinese face a dilemma that they have always faced,” a senior administration official said. “They don’t want North Korea to become a full nuclear weapons state. But they don’t want to cause the state to collapse.”

To counter the Chinese concern, Mr. Steinberg and his delegation argued to the Chinese that failing to crack down on North Korea would prompt reactions that Beijing would find deeply unsettling, including a greater American military presence in the region and more calls in Japan for that country to develop its own weapons.

North Korea’s restoration to the list would be largely symbolic, because it already faces numerous economic sanctions.