North Korea vows to go ahead with rocket launch

NORTH Korea yesterday insisted that it would go ahead with plans to launch a long-range rocket, rejecting criticism in the West that it would scuttle recent diplomatic agreements.

Pyongyang’s officials said last Friday that the country would fire an observation satellite into space on a new rocket as part of celebrations next month of the 100th anniversary of late President Kim Il Sung’s birth.

The announcement, according to a report by Associated Press (AP), came about two weeks after the North agreed to suspend long-range missile tests and make nuclear concessions in exchange for much-needed food aid from the United States.

The agreement was seen as a promising step toward improved relations between the two wartime enemies.

The U.S., Japan, Britain and others have urged North Korea to cancel the planned launch, calling it a threat to diplomatic efforts and warning that it would violate a United Nations (UN) ban on nuclear and missile activity because the same rocket technology can be used for long-range missiles.

China, North Korea’s main political and economic ally, also expressed rare concern on Saturday and called on all parties to exercise restraint.

But yesterday, the North’s official news agency dismissed the criticism, saying it denied North Korea the right to the peaceful use of space.

“It is a sinister and deliberate anti-peace action” by hostile forces, the Korean Central News Agency said in an editorial. It said North Korea remained determined to carry out its plans.

The launch, planned between April 12 and 16, would be North Korea’s third announced attempt since 1998 to send a satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket. It defied similar criticism in April 2009 and went ahead with a launch that was condemned by the UN Security Council.

North Korea quit international nuclear disarmament talks in response and then tested an atomic device, resulting in tightened UN sanctions.

However, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged North Korea to reconsider next month’s planned launch, and U.S. officials have warned they would not provide 240,000 metric tons of promised food aid if it goes ahead.

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Iran trying to build nuclear missiles capable of hitting London

Iran is developing nuclear missiles capable of hitting London, David Cameron warned yesterday.

In a chilling echo of the build-up to the war against Iraq, the Prime Minister suggested that the country’s drive to develop the bomb was potentially a direct threat to the UK.

His comments appeared to move Britain a step closer to war against the hardline Islamic regime.

He told MPs the Tehran government was trying to develop ‘intercontinental missiles’.

And he repeatedly stressed that ‘military action’ against Iran was not ‘off the table’.

‘I don’t believe that an Iranian nuclear weapon is just a threat to Israel,’ he said.

‘It is also clearly very dangerous for the region because it would trigger a nuclear arms race but also it’s a danger more broadly, not least because there are signs that the Iranians want to have some sort of intercontinental missile capability. So we have to be clear this is potentially a threat much more widely.’

The Prime Minister’s warning came just hours after the Cabinet was given a secret briefing by MI6 chief Sir John Sawers and the Government’s national security adviser Sir Kim Darroch on the threat posed by Iran.

Tehran had previously been thought to have access only to medium-range missiles with a reach of about 1,500 miles.

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