Japan PM: North Korea may be capable of sarin-loaded missiles
Country has intensified retaliation talk
TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned Thursday that North Korea may be capable of firing a missile loaded with sarin nerve gas toward Japan, as international concern mounted that a missile or nuclear test by the authoritarian state could be imminent.
“There is a possibility that North Korea is already capable of shooting missiles with sarin as warheads,” Mr. Abe told a parliamentary panel on national security and diplomacy.
Mr. Abe was responding to a question about Japan’s readiness at a time of increased regional tension. A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is heading toward the Korean Peninsula as Pyongyang prepares for the 105th anniversary of the birth of its founder Kim Il Sung this weekend. And with U.S.South Korean wargames ongoing, North Korea has intensified rhetoric warning it would retaliate strongly against any aggression.
South Korea has long said it believes the North can conduct its sixth nuclear test whenever it chooses. The 38 North website, which monitors North Korea, said satellite imagery of the country’s Pyunggye-ri nuclear test site suggests it is “primed and ready” for an explosion.
North Korea, which never signed the international Chemical Weapons Convention, is believed to have up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, according to a South Korean defense white paper.
Mr. Abe cited Syria, where dozens of people died recently in an alleged sarin nerve gas attack, as an example that Japan should take seriously, stressing the need to strengthen its deterrence against North Korea.
The rising tension and the Trump administration’s more assertive policy toward North Korea are apparently helping Mr. Abe’s government gain public support for a stronger defense.
Japan, under its postwar constitution, has limited the role of its military to self-defense and relied on the U.S. for offensive and nuclear capability. But recently, Mr. Abe’s ruling party has proposed Japan should bolster its missile defense, including upgrading the capability to shoot down an enemy missile and acquiring the capacity to attack the base it was fired from.
With President Donald Trump’s administration not ruling out a military option to dealing with North Korea, “tension is certainly rising,” Mr. Abe said.
At a news conference Thursday — the same day reports arose of key components in North Korean rockets coming from Chinese firms, and expanded trade between Beijing and Pyongyang — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on China to join in a “new strategy to end North Korea’s reckless behavior.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, meanwhile, made an appearance highlighting his country’s economic development rather than its adversaries and military might, marking the opening of a new high-rise district.
Another spotlight turned to Pyongyang as the two women accused in the poisoning death of the estranged half brother of North Korea’s ruler appeared in a court in Malaysia.