N. Korea gas-loaded missiles possible: PM

Japan scrambles jet fighters

TOKYO, April 13, (Agencies): Prime Minister

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,” Abe told a parliamentary panel on national security and diplomacy.

Abe was responding to a question about Japan’s readiness at a time of increased regional tension. A US 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.

Citing Syria where dozens of people died recently in an alleged sarin nerve gas attack, Abe said Japan should take the example seriously, stressing the need to strengthen its deterrence against the North.

North Korea, which is not a signatory to the international Chemical Weapons Convention, has been producing chemical weapons since the 1980s and is now estimated to have as many as 5,000 tons, according to a South Korean defense white paper. Its stockpile reportedly has 25 types of agents, including sarin.

Experts say if North Korea were to attack South Korea, it would likely target Seoul’s defenses with chemical and biological weapons dropped from aircraft or delivered via missiles, artillery and grenades.

Japan, under its postwar constitution, has limited the role of its military to self-defense only and relied on the US for offensive and nuclear capability. But recently, Abe’s ruling party has proposed that 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,” Abe said Wednesday to a group of lawmakers from his ruling party who sought increased safety measures for Japanese nationals in case of an emergency.

Abe

Japan’s air force scrambled fighter jets to chase away foreign aircraft at record pace in the year to March 31, government figures showed on Thursday, as Chinese military activity in and around the East China Sea escalated.

Japan worries that China’s probing of its air defences is part of a push to extend its military influence in the East China Sea and western Pacific, where Japan controls an island chain stretching 1,400 km (870 miles) south towards Taiwan.

“Recently we have seen Chinese military aircraft operating further south and that is bringing them closer to the main Okinawa island and other parts of the island chain,” Japan’s top military commander, Admiral told a briefing in Tokyo.

Concentration

Okinawa is home to the biggest concentration of US Marine Corp forces outside the United States, hosting the bulk of the roughly 50,000 US military personnel stationed in Japan.

Japan’s Air Self Defence Force reported its fighters scrambled 1,168 times over the 12 months, up from 873 last year. A record 851 jets headed off approaching Chinese planes, or 280 more instances than in the corresponding period last year.

The new figure was also well above the previous high of 944 incidents in 1984, when Russian, rather than Chinese, aircraft triggered most of the scrambles.

The uptick in Chinese activity has contributed to rising tension in East Asia since the start of the year as North Korea pushes ahead with ballistic missile and nuclear bomb tests that have stoked fears in Japan, the United States and elsewhere.

Japan’s navy plans joint drills around the East China Sea with the US Navy’s Carl Vinson carrier strike group, as it steams towards the Korean peninsula, two sources told Reuters.

Encounters with Russian aircraft, which are often bombers flying from the north that skirt around Japan’s airspace, rose 4.5 percent, to 301 scrambles.

Sri Lanka will make sure no military activity is conducted at its ports, Prime Minister

said in Tokyo on Wednesday, as China invests heavily in roads and harbours on the island nation.

Beijing, which is fortifying islands in the South China Sea to which it lays claim, has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars in Sri Lanka’s infrastructure since the end of the country’s civil war in 2009, when Colombo was shunned by Western investors over its human rights record.

Hub

“Sri Lanka hopes to become the regional hub of the Indian Ocean again,” Wickremesinghe told a joint news conference following a meeting with his Japanese counterpart, “We want to ensure that we develop all our ports, and all these ports are used for commercial activity, transparent activity, and will not be available to anyone for any military activity.”

Wickremesinghe did not mention any specific countries. China’s investments in transportation infrastructure in Sri Lanka are considered part of its ambitions to build maritime routes to the oil-rich Middle East and on to Europe.

That makes some countries, including India and the United States, nervous. Sri Lanka sits near shipping lanes through which much of the world’s trade passes on its way to China and Japan.

“The era of the Indo-Pacific is now being ushered in. Yet, however, true regional prosperity cannot come into being without the realisation of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Abe told the same news conference.