Obama issues North rocket warning
March 25, 2012
Obama arrived in South Korea on Sunday, a day before the start of a nuclear summit, to visit US troops along the border and to show his support for South Korea as nuclear tensions rise in the region.
"North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or by provocations," Obama said in a joint news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak.
North Korea announced last week that it would launch a rocket into orbit in April, fuelling fears of nuclear developments in the communist country.
Obama will take part in a two-day global summit on nuclear security hosted by South Korea, which is set to start on Monday. The focus of the summit is atomic terrorism, but the nuclear standoff with North Korea and Iran, as well as North Korea's planned launch, will surely dominate discussions.
Leaders condemn launch plan
Washingtonhas condemned North Korea's plan to launch the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite into orbit on an Unha-3 rocket in April. The launch is scheduled to mark the 100th birthday of the isolated, highly militarized communist state's deceased founder, Kim Il-Sung.
President Lee said on Sunday that he and Obama had agreed that the long-range rocket launch planned for next month would be "a provocative action."
"President Obama and I have agreed to respond sternly to any provocations and threats by the North and to continually enhance the firm South Korea-US defense readiness," he said.
Washingtonand Seoul say the launch would be a disguised missile test which would breach UN Security Council Resolution 1874, which bans any ballistic missile tests by the communist state.
The US also says a launch would breach a bilateral deal reached just last month, offering US food aid in return for a partial nuclear freeze and a missile test moratorium.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution banning such tests after North Korea staged missile and nuclear tests in 2009.
Obama seeks support
More than 50 other world leaders are expected to participate in the talks starting on Monday. The summit is the follow-up to the first nuclear security summit Obama held in Washington in 2010.
Iran's continued nuclear developments are also threatening the disarmament agenda and drawing international criticism.
Obama plans to meet on Monday with China's President Hu Jintao and outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the Seoul summit, where he hopes to win their support in pressuring Pyongyang.
Chinais the North's key ally. It and Russia - along with South Korea, Japan and the United States - are involved in stalled negotiations which began in 2003 on scrapping Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
North Korea, meanwhile, has denounced the Seoul summit as a "burlesque" intended to rally world opinion against its nuclear program.
tm/dfm (Reuters, AP, AFP)