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SEOUL: North Korea raised the stakes Friday in its nuclear disputes
with South Korea and the United States, test-firing several missiles
and warning it may slow down work to disable atomic plants.
The actions came one day after the communist
state expelled South Korean officials from a joint industrial
estate, in protest at the new conservative government’s tougher
policy towards Pyongyang.
Presidential spokesman Lee Dong Kwan described
the missile launches as part of a regular military exercise. “I
believe North Korea will not sour relations with South Korea,” he
said.
But one analyst said it was “highly
possible” the situation would worsen.
“We may see naval clashes (in disputed waters)
in the Yellow Sea,” said Yang Moo Jin of the University of North
Korean Studies, adding that the North seeks to sway the outcome of
the April 9 parliamentary election.
Yonhap news agency said three or four missiles
were fired into the Yellow Sea. It said they were Russian-designed
Styx ship-to-ship missiles with a range of 46 kilometers (29 miles).
There were several similar launches last summer.
After a decade-long “sunshine” rapprochement policy under
liberal presidents, the new Seoul administration is linking
long-term economic aid to nuclear disarmament.
It says it will also raise Pyongyang’s human
rights record. On Thursday in Geneva, Seoul voted for a UN Human
Rights Council resolution expressing deep concern at that record.
An international nuclear disarmament deal is
currently deadlocked because of disputes between Washington and
Pyongyang.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman warned
that US delays in resolving the dispute could slow down work to
disable its plutonium-producing atomic plants.
The spokesman, quoted by the official Korean
Central News Agency, said the US was hindering progress in
six-nation talks by raising “unjust demands.”
North Korea last year agreed to disable its main
atomic plants at Yongbyon and declare all its nuclear programs and
materials by the end of 2007.
The US-supervised disablement has been going
ahead but Washington and Pyongyang are at odds over the declaration.
The North says it submitted the declaration last
November, but the United States says it has not fully accounted for
a suspected uranium enrichment program and for allegations of
nuclear proliferation to Syria.
“If the US keeps insisting that what does not
exist exists, and delays the settlement of the nuclear issue, it
would have a serious impact on the disablement of nuclear
facilities,” the North’s spokesman said. “We made it clear we
have no uranium enrichment program, we have not extended any nuclear
help to any country. We have never dreamed of such things. There
will never, ever be such things.”
-- AFP
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