North Korea directs missiles towards Australia

[CelticViking]

North Korea's forthcoming missile launch will be aimed towards South-East Asia and Australia for the first time, the US has warned.
The warning was delivered in person yesterday to the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, by a senior official in the Obama Administration, Kurt Campbell, during a visit to Sydney.
North Korea, which claimed to have successfully tested a nuclear weapon in 2009, has for years worked to improve its long-range ballistic missile capability. Previous missile tests have been launched east, over Japan. But US intelligence suggests the launch announced for mid-April will be aimed south for the first time.
"If the missile test proceeds as North Korea has indicated, our judgment is that it will impact in an area roughly between Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines," Dr Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said yesterday.
"We have never seen this trajectory before. We have weighed into each of these countries and asked them to make clear that such a test is provocative and this plan should be discontinued."
After the meeting Mr Carr told the Herald: "The North Korean nuclear and long-range missile plans represent a real and credible threat to the security of the region and to Australia."
The launch would be "in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions".
Mr Carr said he and Dr Campbell had "shared views on how both the US and Australia could engage our regional partners and allies to encourage North Korea to abandon its plans".
US President Barack Obama will be among some 50 leaders, including Australia's Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to meet in a summit in the South Korean capital of Seoul on Monday to discuss nuclear disarmament. North Korea's abrupt announcement last week of its missile test is expected to dominate discussion.
The announcement from Pyongyang startled observers because it came less than three weeks after it had sealed a new agreement with the US in return for food aid.
South Korea has called the move a "grave provocation". Its president, Lee Myung-bak, has said he will ask Mr Obama to revise an alliance agreement that limits his country to missiles with a 300-kilometre range.
Japan's Defence Minister, Naoki Tanaka, said yesterday Tokyo was prepared to shoot down the North Korean long-range rocket if it threatened the country.
-Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/austral...ards-Australia

[The Lawspeaker]

Maybe this time the Americans should make it very clear: direct nuclear missiles towards North Korea and send troops to South Korea, the Philippines and Japan while also trying to work between the South Koreans and the Chinese to improve their relations and wean them off North Korea.

[JamesSteal]

Hopefully none of the missiles will hit an Aborigine village. We can't afford losing anymore of our planet's great minds.

[Supreme American]

So they'll go like what, 50 miles at best and hit the drink?

[Nglund]

Where are our Juche followers when we need them?!

[Fortis in Arduis]

Where are our Juche followers when we need them?!

I will always be a true comrade and true to the Juche ideal!

[Anarch]

Awesome. Just when Afghanistan is winding down, we gear up for another war. How exciting. Well, that's what napalm was made for

[Smaland]

"This picture, released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on April 9, 2009 shows a Unha-2 rocket, supposedly carrying an experimental communication satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, as it is prepared for launch from Hwadae-gun in North Hamgyong province of North Korea on April 5. (AFP Photo / KCNA via KNS)"

The South Korean government has threatened to shoot down a North Korean rocket due for launch in April. The rocket mission has sparked international controversy, the US labeling it a test for a long-range missile that could carry nuclear warheads.

"We are studying measures such as tracking and shooting down [parts] of a North Korean missile in case it strays out of its normal trajectory" and violates South Korean airspace, said Yoon Won-shik, a spokesman at the South's Defense Ministry.

He described the launch as a “reckless and provocative act that undermines peace on the Korean peninsula.”

Japan has also rattled the saber, saying it will shoot down the missiles with AEGIS warships if the rocket threatens their country.

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