- Says Washington preparing to attack the communist state
- Russia claims designing a ‘revolutionary’ weapon that would make any US missile shield useless
SEOUL:
North Korea on Tuesday threatened to strengthen its “self-defence” capability, accusing the United States of pushing a missile defence system as preparation to attack the communist state.
The threat came as Washington planned to deploy a destroyer fitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment in Japanese waters off the Korean peninsula in September as part of a ballistic
missile defence system.
“Now that the US is frantically pushing ahead with its moves to establish the MD in order to mount a pre-emptive attack on the DPRK under the pretext of its ‘ballistic missile threat,’ it is
compelled to increase its capability for self-defence to cope with those moves,” Pyongyang’s state-run Minju Joson newspaper said.
DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.
The Minju Joson dispatch, carried by Pyongyang’s official news agency KCNA, did not elaborate.
Although North Korea’s 1.1 million army is equipped mostly with outdated Soviet-era weapons, the country has pursued an aggressive missile development programme.
It shocked the region in 1998 by test-firing a three-stage rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific. The communist regime claimed that it was launching a satellite, but the
United States believed that it was a test-launch of a long-range ballistic missile.
“The story about the ‘threat of ballistic missile’ from the DPRK spread by the US is a whopping lie,” Minju Joson said. The communist state is also under international pressure to abandon
its nuclear weapons development.
The United States, two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have met twice in an attempt to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Both rounds of talks ended without much progress, but the nations agreed to meet again before July.
North Korea says it will allow nuclear inspections and dismantle its atomic facilities only if the United States provides economic aid and written guarantees that US forces will not invade.
It also insists that it will keep a nuclear programme for power generation.
Washington demands that North Korea first dismantle all its nuclear facilities, saying it previously broke international agreements not to develop nuclear weapons in return for oil and other
economic aid.
Meanwhile, Russian news agencies reported, quoting a senior Defence Ministry official that Russia has designed a “revolutionary” weapon that would make the prospective US missile defence
useless.
The official, who was not identified by name, said tests conducted during last month’s military manoeuvres would dramatically change the philosophy behind development of Russia’s nuclear
forces, the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported on Monday.
If deployed, the new weapon would take the value of any US missile shield to “zero,” the news agencies quoted the official as saying.
The official said the new weapon would be inexpensive, providing an “asymmetric answer” to US missile defences, which are proving extremely costly to develop.
Russia, meanwhile, also has continued research in prospective missile defences and has an edge in some areas compared to other nations, the official said.
The statement reported on Monday was in line with claims by President Vladimir Putin’s that experiments performed during last month’s manoeuvres proved that Russia could soon build strategic
weapons that could puncture any missile-defence system.
At the time, Col-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, explained that the military tested a “hypersonic flying vehicle” that was able
to manoeuvre between space and the earth’s atmosphere.
Military analysts said that the mysterious new weapons could be a manoeuvrable ballistic missile warhead or a hypersonic cruise missile.
While Putin said the development of such new weapons wasn’t aimed against the United States, most observers viewed the move as Moscow’s retaliation to the US missile defence plans.
After years of vociferous protests, Russia reacted calmly when Washington withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 in order to develop of a nationwide missile shield. But
US-Russian relations have soured again lately, and Moscow has complained about Washington’s plans to build new low-yield nuclear weapons.
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