Pyongyang’s new missile has ‘unprecedented range’
BEIJING: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that North Korea’s latest missile test was “dangerous,” but he warned that Pyongyang was being intimidated and called for a peaceful solution to regional tensions.
“We are categorically against the expansion of the club of nuclear powers,” Putin told reporters after an international forum in Beijing.
“We consider (the missile test) counter-productive, harmful and dangerous,” Putin said.
But, he added: “We must stop intimidating North Korea and find a peaceful solution to this problem.”
North Korea celebrated Sunday’s launch of what appeared to be its longest-range ballistic missile yet tested in a bid to bring the US mainland within reach, saying it was capable of carrying a “heavy nuclear warhead.”
The missile was launched on an unusually high trajectory, with the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) saying it flew to an altitude of 2,111.5 kilometers and traveled 787 kilometers before coming down in the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
That suggests a range of 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) or more if flown for maximum distance, analysts said.
The White House said Sunday that the missile came down “so close to Russian soil... the president (Donald Trump) cannot imagine that Russia is pleased.”
But Russia’s Defense Ministry later said the missile landed about 500 kilometers from its territory and posed no threat.
Sunday’s launch was of a “new ground-to-ground medium longrange strategic ballistic rocket” named the Hwasong- 12, KCNA said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally oversaw the test, it said, and “hugged officials in the field of rocket research, saying that they worked hard to achieve a great thing.”
The isolated North is under multiple sets of UN sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs, which have triggered global alarm.
Aside from space launches, Jeffrey Lewis, an expert, told AFP: “This is the longest range missile North Korea has ever tested.”
On the respected 38 North website, aerospace engineering specialist John Schilling said it appeared to demonstrate an intermediate-range ballistic missile that could “reliably strike the US base at Guam” in the Pacific.
“More importantly,” he added, it “may represent a substantial advance to developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).”
The North says it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against the threat of invasion and has carried out two atomic tests and dozens of missile launches since the beginning of last year.
Last week, new South Korea President Moon Jae-In, who advocates reconciliation with Pyongyang, said at his inauguration that he was willing “in the right circumstances” to visit the North to ease tensions.
But he slammed the latest missile test as a “reckless provoca- tion” after holding an emergency meeting with national security advisers.
Dialogue would be possible “only if the North changes its attitude,” he said.
In April, North Korea put dozens of missiles on show at a giant military parade through the streets of Pyongyang, including one that appeared to be the type of device launched on Sunday.
The test “proved to the full all the technical specifications of the rocket” which was “capable of carrying a large-size heavy nuclear warhead,” KCNA said.
There are doubts whether Pyongyang can miniaturise a nuclear weapon sufficiently to fit it into a missile nose cone, and some believe it has mastered the re- entry technology needed to ensure it survives returning into Earth’s atmosphere.
But it described another launch earlier this year as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan — which has long been within its range.
Schilling said the ability to hit Guam, 3,400 kilometers away, was not a game- changer, but that the new missile could be a step along the way.