UN at loggerheads over North Korea rocket | Stuff.co.nz
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The United Nations failed to agree on a response to North Korea's long-range rocket launch despite pressure from Washington and its allies for action, while regional powers weighed the extent of the new security threat.
Analysts said Sunday's launch of the rocket - which flew over Japan during its 3200km flight - was effectively a test of a ballistic missile designed to carry a warhead as far as the US state of Alaska.
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Japan had called for the emergency UN Security Council meeting on Sunday. But the 15 members agreed only to discuss the matter further, diplomats said.
The United States, Japan and South Korea say the launch violated Security Council resolutions banning the firing of ballistic missiles by Pyongyang, imposed after a nuclear test and other missile exercises in 2006.
Council diplomats said China, the nearest North Korea has to a major ally, and Russia were not convinced the launch of what North Korea said was a satellite was a violation of UN rules. Three other countries supported this view.
"It's 10 against five," one diplomat told Reuters.
The US military and South Korea said no part of the Taepodong-2 rocket entered orbit.
South Korea's biggest daily the Chosun Ilbo, quoting government sources, said the rocket flew 3,200km, which would put the US territory of Guam nearly in reach. The newspaper said this was double the range of an earlier version, called the Taepodong-1, fired over Japan in 1998.
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I'm not familiar with resolution 1718 against North Korea. But it sounds like they were in clear violation from what I've been told briefly. Don't know why China and Russia thought otherwise...
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Another leading South Korean daily, the JoongAng Ilbo, said Seoul needed to review how it organised its military, which has long focused on a possible conventional war with North Korea.
"North Korea's rocket launch has shifted the security landscape on the Korean peninsula because we must accept the reality that it is capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles," the JoongAng Ilbo said in an editorial.
Ordinary South Koreans, used to the unpredictable behaviour of their impoverished neighbour, were largely unfazed by the launch. But 88 percent of Japanese respondents to a poll published in the Yomiuri daily newspaper said they were uneasy about North Korea's missile development.
"There should be active public debate as to whether we should have the means to pre-emptively destroy North Korea's missile facilities," Japan's conservative Sankei Shimbun said in an editorial.
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Interesting... I wonder if we'll see a more hawkish talk from Japan about getting rid of it's pacifist constitution because of the recent NK missile tests.
I would support a limited strike by Japan, US and South Korea I guess.