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North Korea Missile Launch Doesn't Have to Cause Confrontation
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by Tina Kells | April 3, 2009 at 06:37 pm
95 views | 22 Recommendations | 2 comments
US Senator Jim Webb has stated that he does not think a North Korea missile launch needs to cause confrontation in the region. In response to a warning from Japan that it would shoot down anything that violates its airspace, Webb acknowledged that while this was well with Japan's rights he didn't think it would come to that.
“I don’t see a high probability that there will be an international confrontation,” Webb, a Virginia Democrat and chairman of a Senate subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific affairs, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” The program is scheduled for broadcast today.
North Korea has drawn international condemnation from world leaders for what it says is a planned launch of a satellite into orbit this month. Webb, who served as secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan, said the Japanese “certainly would have the right under international law” to shoot down a missile they felt violated their sovereignty.
Asked if he had any sense that a North Korean launch was imminent, Webb said: “I really don’t.”
North Korea has been faced with global opposition to the missile launch plans. Threats of sanctions have been met with defiance and North Korea has said it will leave disarmament talks if any new sanctions were levied.
North Korea has threatened to quit the disarmament talks if it is hit with new U.N. sanctions after a missile test. Bosworth said it is hard to predict North Korean behavior, saying they might, or might not go into a "mode of escalation" in response to U.N. penalties.
The North Korea test missile launch is expected sometime between Saturday, April 4, 2009 and Wednesday, April 8, 2009.
Meanwhile some in the United States are bracing for the remote possibility that a North Korean missile may go astray over US airspace. Local papers in Honolulu have reported that protective measures have been taken in the unlikely event that a missile reaches US airspace over the Hawaiian Islands.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, said the only scenario under which the United States "might" try to shoot down such a rocket is "if we had an aberrant missile — one that was headed for Hawai'i."
So how worried should Hawai'i be that some sub-orbital North Korean space junk may fall out of the sky?
"It's a big ocean. The percentages are not great that it's going to hit in Hawai'i," said Riki Ellison, chairman of the Washington D.C.-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.
But there is that slim possibility, he believes.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 04:19 on April 4th, 2009
I think some one better tell the Pentagon and ask them what their plan is?
Japan seems to be just a trial ground of sorts for the US missile defence system.
This way the US can stay out of it internationally and yet use their system with in Japan to see if it works, Should any thing go wrong the US can point the finger at Japan same in case the system should faille.
Should it be a success the US can use this to sale the MDS and promote it in their own political ranks.
Japan is the willing Scape-Goat of sort in all this.
Putting at risk its own people.
at 06:26 on May 29th, 2009
Great article. It is hoped that the situation can be resolved peacefully.