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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Green who wrote (1250)	2/10/2003 3:50:44 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 50440

Japan threarens to ask U.S. to launch pre-emptive attack on North Korea 2003-02-10 / Agence France-Presse / TOKYO Japan will consider imposing sanctions against North Korea if the secretive Stalinist state, at the center of a nuclear standoff, fires a ballistic missile, a report said Sunday. If a North Korean missile fell on Japanese territory or waters, the Tokyo government would convene an emergency meeting and consult the United States on counter-measures, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. The report did not specify what counter-measures could be taken. But Japanese officials said last month Tokyo could ask US forces to launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korean missile bases if Pyongyang was preparing to fire missiles at its territory. Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said it would be "within the legal framework of self-defense" if Japan asked the US to launch a pre-emptive attack if it had "no defense alternative." Even if a missile landed outside Japanese territory, Tokyo would still consider imposing sanctions such as freezing aid, the leading daily quoted an internal government paper as saying. Sanctions could be justified as a missile launch breaches a declaration signed by North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-Il and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at a historic summit in Pyongyang last September, the report said. The declaration said North Korea expressed its intention to continue its moratorium on missile tests beyond 2003. Japan has twice been alarmed by North Korean missile launches. In 1998, Pyongyang sent shockwaves around the world by test-firing a suspected Taepodong-1 missile, part of which flew over Japan's main island of Honshu and into the Pacific. Earlier, North Korea launched into the Sea of Japan a Rodong-1 missile with a range of 1,300 kilometers (810 miles) in 1993 after testing two types of crude Scud missiles. The government document said Tokyo would demand Pyongyang halt a missile launch when preparations for firing had been confirmed by such signs as troop movements, according to the daily. At the same time, the Japanese public would be warned of an imminent missile test, the document added. On Friday, a leading Japanese defense analyst said North Korea might test-fire this year a long-range Taepodong-2 missile which could be capable of reaching parts of the continental United States. Hideshi Takesada, a professor at the National Institute for defense Studies, said the hardline Stalinist state had conducted new missile tests every five years. A Taepodong-2 missile has a range estimated between 3,500 and 6,000 kilometers (2,190 and 3,750 miles). According to South Korean defense ministry data, North Korea is currently testing Taepodong-1 missiles with a range of 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) and is also developing longer-range Taepodong-2 missiles. North Korean ambassador to China Choe Kim-Su said last month Pyongyang might resume missile tests after Washington cut off fuel shipments late last year over North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program.