North Korea announced yesterday it would launch a rocket carrying a satellite next month, just 16 days after agreeing to suspend long-range missile tests in return for massive US food aid.
The US, Japan and South Korea condemned the plan and said it would breach a UN ban imposed after previous launches.
Blast-off will be between April 12 and 16 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung, the communist state’s official news agency and state television said.
The US State Department called the proposed launch “highly provocative” and a threat to regional security.
It would also be inconsistent with the announced missile test moratorium, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.
The surprise February 29 deal, under which Pyongyang also promised to freeze its uranium enrichment plant, had raised hopes of eased tensions under the new regime headed by Kim Jong-Un.
But one analyst said yesterday’s announcement effectively killed off the agreement, under which the US was to give the hungry and impoverished nation 240,000 tonnes of food over a year.
The last long-range rocket launch on April 5, 2009, also purportedly to put a satellite into orbit, brought UN Security Council condemnation and tightened sanctions.
Pyongyang quit six-party nuclear disarmament talks in protest at the censure and conducted its second atomic weapons test the following month.
The North insists its satellite launches are for peaceful scientific purposes while the US and other nations call them disguised missile tests.
UN Security Council Resolution 1874, passed after the North’s second nuclear test, demands that it “not conduct any further nuclear test or any launch using ballistic missile technology”.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said any launch would breach the resolution and be a “grave, provocative act”.
Japan, whose airspace was overflown by the 2009 rocket, also said a launch would violate UN decrees and it would “strongly demand self-restraint”.
China, the North’s main economic benefactor, urged “all parties to play a constructive role” in keeping peace on the peninsula.
The North said a Unha-3 rocket will launch a home-built polar-orbiting earth observation satellite known as Kwangmyongsong-3.