Seoul warns N. Korea over rocket launch

South Korea warned Sunday that North Korea could face fresh UN sanctions if it went ahead with a planned rocket launch, as spy satellites revealed part of a long-range rocket on the North's launch pad.

Global concern has been mounting over North Korea's announcement that it would launch a communications satellite between April 4 and 8.

The United States, Japan and South Korea believe Pyongyang is actually testing a long-range Taepodong-2 missile that could, in theory, reach Alaska.

In Seoul, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan cautioned that should the rocket launch go ahead, the North -- one of the world's most impoverished countries -- would face new UN sanctions.

"It is common sense to go back into a sanctions mode after North Korea's rocket launch," Yu said in an interview published Sunday in JoongAng, a newly-launched weekly newspaper in Seoul.

"When there is a violation of the UN Security Council resolution, we just cannot go on as if nothing happened."

UN Security Council Resolution 1718 was passed in 2006 to press the North to halt nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches, but sanctions have been suspended or loosely applied since Pyongyang joined six-way disarmament talks.

The North said last week that any United Nations discussion of its upcoming rocket launch would cause the breakdown of the denuclearisation talks between the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

Yu admitted the five states were yet to agree on "the degree of the penalty" to be imposed on North Korea should it go ahead with a rocket launch, but he said he was confident a compromise would be reached at the UN.

South Korea and Japan were demanding "strong" measures, the United States was focused more on "dialogue" while Russia and China remained "cool" on the issue of implementing sanctions, he said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Sunday that spy satellites had photographed the nose cone of a long-range North Korean rocket on its launch pad.

"But it is impossible to tell what object has been loaded onto the round-shaped rocket top -- a satellite or a warhead," an unnamed government source told Yonhap.

South Korea's defence ministry declined to comment on the report.

Seoul believes Pyongyang will choose its launch date based on weather considerations, Yonhap quoted South Korean officials as saying. Meteorologists predict the weather over the launch site will be clear on the 6th, 7th or 8th of April, the agency said.

Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported Sunday, quoting unnamed Japanese defence ministry sources, that North Korea could test a short- or medium-range ballistic missile after the initial rocket launch, from a different site.

The paper also said a group of Iranian missile experts was staying in North Korea to help Pyongyang prepare for the launch.

A top US general last week said the United States could shoot down the projectile if they determined it to be a ballistic missile.

Washington and Tokyo have worked jointly on a missile defence shield, using land and sea-based missiles, against a possible attack from North Korea, which fired a missile over Japan in 1998 and tested a nuclear bomb in 2006.





Staples