Posted on 04/01/2009 11:15:16 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
N. Korea will retaliate against any attempt to intercept rocket: military
SEOUL, April 2 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's military warned Thursday it will attack "major targets" in Japan should Tokyo shoot down a satellite it plans to orbit as early as this weekend.
The warning comes as leaders of South Korea, the United States and Japan are meeting at the G-20 summit in London, with North Korea's rocket launch high on the agenda of their bilateral talks. The three have threatened to bring Pyongyang to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions if it goes ahead with the launch announced as scheduled between Saturday and Wednesday.
Government sources in Seoul said on Thursday that North Korea has sent a fleet of fighter jets to the east coast near Musudan-ri, the launch site in North Hamgyong Province.
"It is the Japanese reactionaries, the sworn enemy of the Korean people, who are perpetrating the most evil doings over the DPRK (North Korea)'s projected satellite launch for peaceful purposes," the North's military said in what it called "an important report," carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"If Japan recklessly 'intercepts' the DPRK's satellite for peaceful purposes, the KPA (Korean People's Army) will mercilessly deal deadly blows not only at the already deployed intercepting means but at major targets," it said.
Warships capable of tracking and intercepting the North Korean rocket have been deployed to waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Washington and Tokyo had earlier hinted at a possible interception, but they now say they won't do so unless the rocket threatens their territory.
North Korea has repeatedly warned of retaliation, saying it may quit the six-party nuclear talks if its satellite launch is referred to the U.N. Security Council. Pyongyang also warned it would view as a "declaration of war" South Korea's participation in the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, a multilateral effort to interdict shipments and the transfer of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction by countries like North Korea.
"It is a legitimate right of a sovereign state in which no one can interfere to use space for peaceful purposes," the North's military said.
It also claimed that North Korea sent cable notices on March 21 banning access to its airspace that will be affected by the launch to civil aviation authorities in the U.S., Japan, Russia, China, Switzerland and South Korea.
"However, only Japan is making much ado as if something serious had happened, finding fault with even the DPRK's above-said advance notice and terming the launch of 'Kwangmyongsong-2,' the DPRK's experimental communications satellite for peaceful purposes, a 'hostile act,'" it said.
The statement also urged the U.S. to "immediately withdraw its already deployed armed forces" and South Korea to stop "disturbing the said launch."
Ping!
Thanks. The threat is being aired over here in Japan, too. National news picking it up this afternoon, from Pyongyang. More sabre rattling and mind games from the Cognac Guzzler.
Oh, that’ll show us./s The situation there is getting weirder by the day. Maybe the endgame is coming?
LeMay was right.
Just precisely how does one engage in stipulating (as they threaten) a "declaration of war", when one technically is already IN A STATE OF WAR at the present time, merely enjoying a temporary (albeit long) ceasefire/truce??
Oh, poor General Douglas A. MacArthur in his grave, if he knew of what we have come to 60 years later. He would certainly say, smoking that corncob pipe, "Enough of this nonsense." Even now I can sense his bitterness and disdain towards our pathetic US State Department, who for the most part have gotten us into this jam.
Even he knows his days are limited, one way or another.
I think NK is all hat and no cattle. Every country needs to stop “talking” to NK. These “talks” always amount to what is extortion by NK and it needs to end. Anytime the NK’s find themselves without two biscuits to rub together, they crank the bluster up a notch, test or threaten to test a missile or create any other number of threats to peace in the region.
Their act has become tiresome. They are China’s baby, so let the Chinese deal with them.
Agreed. There should be no going back to that rotten table in Beijing, with the places for six people. Negotiating at that venue is a waste of time and is just giving them more time to stall and hurry their offensive weaponry against us.
They'd probably tone it down if we stopped paying so much attention to it.
Suppose you may have some neighborhood kid, who want to grab attention by creating troubles. You cannot indefinitely ignore him if he tries to set a house in fire, by lighting up and tossing a match into a propane gas canister.
This is the situation we have here. Much of the blame goes to China. It loves the fact that N. Korea is their SOB, tormenting China's adversaries in the region. If somebody smacks down N. Korea, China steps up and cover for it.
Now we have a spectacle that other neighbors, feeling impotent, are trying their best to dismiss it and rationalize it is no threat. Not so when it tries to set the neighborhood on fire, even with a rudimentary means like good-old-fashioned matches.
We need to send in Hans Brix again.
It is past time that their bluff was called. Target them with a few nukes, tell them they will be roasted alive if they make a move on SK and mean it.
This crap is old.
who?
So it takes email a month to slap together an Russian rust bcket and somehow they will mmediatey atack Japan
This is a joke
That little blob of light makes a damned good target...
“That little blob of light makes a damned good target...”
That little blob of light is probably a laser designator.
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