Nordkorea kündigt Atomtest an

[Dessi]

Quelle: web.de
Nordkorea testet zum ersten Mal Atomwaffe

Nordkorea hat zum ersten Mal in seiner Geschichte eine Atomwaffe getestet. Der unterirdische Test sei sicher und erfolgreich verlaufen, meldete die staatliche Nachrichtenagentur KCNA.

...

[simplify]

Original geschrieben von PC-Oldie-Udo
Na das wäre doch mal wieder eine schöne Gelegenheit für die Ölmultis die Preise zu erhöhen, es stinkt denen doch eh schon das der Preis so tief gefallen ist

was das eine mit dem anderen zu tun hat, ist mir jetzt nicht so ganz klar

[OMI]

Genau das ist ja der Gag - mir ist auch in den seltensten Fällen klar, warum die Preise erhöht werden ...

[simplify]

wenn die nordkoreaner mit atombomben werfen, dann kann der rest der menschheit wohl das öl zum discountpreis haben

ein land mit atomwaffen, kann man nicht mit flugzeugen und bodentruppen angreifen, sondern wohl nur mit atomwaffen. die atomare wolke macht dann aber nicht an den landesgrenzen halt, sondern kommt auch bei uns an.

[OMI]

Nun ja, noch werfen sie ja nicht damit - aber leider haben sie den ersten Schritt dazu getan.

Ich habe aber immer wieder die These im Hinterkopf, die Du mit Deinem Beitrag auch wieder bestätigst:

Sobald ein Land Atomwaffen hat, ist es sicher ....

oder schlimmer.....

erst wenn ein Land Atomwaffen hat ist es sicher.

Denn dann ist man bedeutend vorsichtiger als ausländische Macht, etwas zu unternehmen ...

[simplify]

die these ist ja auch wohl nicht so verkehrt. wobei die nordkoreaner damit wohl auch erpressen wollen. für ausreichend lebensmittel und sontige sachen würden sie bestimmt auch wieder für eine gewisse zeit stillhalten.

bei nordkorea sind aber diesmal nicht so sehr die amis gefragt, sondern mehr die die nachbarn.

[Benjamin]

N. Korea's move threatens stability
By David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun International Herald Tribune, The New York Times

Published: October 9, 2006


North Korea said Monday that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it had joined the club of nuclear weapons states. The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.

It also followed repeated warnings from Washington to Beijing that a test would invite harsher economic sanctions against the already impoverished, isolated country.

The North Korean move to prove itself a nuclear power not only complicated U.S. efforts to tame Iran's nuclear ambitions but also set a precedent with far-reaching implications, officials and experts say. Unlike India and Pakistan, which have never promised not to develop nuclear weapons, North Korea had first joined a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty, then quit it and developed a nuclear arsenal, experts said.

China called the test a "flagrant and brazen" violation of international opinion, and said it "firmly opposes" North Korea's conduct.

"This is a grave threat that shakes stability and peace in Northeast Asia," said a statement from the office of President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea. "Our government will react sternly under our principle that we can never tolerate the North Korean possession of nuclear weapons."

Speaking at a news conference in Seoul, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan called the test an "unpardonable act."

The United States condemned the claim by North Korea that it had conducted a nuclear test as a "provocative act" and called for immediate action by the UN Security Council.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude on the Korean Peninsula.

The nuclear test took place under a tunnel beneath a mountain near Mususan-ri, a remote village on North Korea's northeast coast, where the North Korean military launched seven missiles on July 5, according to South Korean lawmakers who attended a closed-door briefing by South Korea's main government spy agency, the National Intelligence Service.

In its official announcement of a nuclear test, North Korea said it marked "a great leap forward in the building of a great, prosperous, powerful socialist nation," and "will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."

Analysts in the region were divided over whether China and South Korea would impose the kind of severe sanctions championed by hawks in Washington and Tokyo - including an immediate stop on oil shipments, trade and aid, as well as the intercepting of North Korean ships - that could unleash instability in North Korea or could trigger more provocations by the North, such as missile tests or armed clashes on the border with the South.

On Monday, South Korea warned North Korea against making such a "mistake" along the inter-Korean border, the world's most heavily armed frontier, because the United States and South Korean militaries are "fully ready to repel any provocation by the North."

Baek Seung Joo, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul said, "China may agree with the United States that North Korea with nuclear weapons should be under the rule of a leader more rational than Kim Jong Il," whose regime has repeatedly flouted international treaties and has a history of proliferating weapons technology. "The North Korean regime will face the worst yet environment for survival."

Andrei Lankov, a Russian born expert on North Korea who is teaching at Seoul's Kookmin University, said that China, South Korea and Russia would join in sanctions against North Korea, but not for long. Soon enough, they will find excuses, such as famine in North Korea, to resume aid shipments to North Korea and prop up the regime, he said.

"We are going to see a lot of hysterics and tough talk. When all these hysterics are over, things will go back to business as usual, in half a year or in a year or so," Lankov said.

Sanctions at least will have no immediate impact on North Korea, where they are more likely to incite deeper anti-American hatred than anti-Kim Jong Il discontent among the North's 22 million people, who have lived under decades of totalitarian brain-washing, experts say.

Surgical strikes against North Korea's nuclear facilities are highly unlikely because the facilities are hard to detect in a country that keeps most of its key military facilities underground and also because China and South Korea fear such attacks could lead to a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula, they said.

In South Korea, officials said they believed that an explosion occurred around 10:36 a.m. Monday.

South Korean seismologists, on a round-the-clock alert for signs of a nuclear test in North Korea, detected an underground explosion that triggered a tremor with a magnitude of 3.58 to 3.7, said Yoon Tae Young, spokesman for the presidential Blue House.

That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away.

The Chinese, who have been North Korea's main ally for 60 years but have grown increasingly frustrated by its defiance of Beijing, sent an emergency alert to Washington through the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Within minutes, President George W. Bush was notified by his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, that a test was imminent.

South Korea immediately dispatched more guards along its tense border with North Korea, said the office of the South Korean military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The suspected test site was located in a region of North Hamgyong Province where American spy satellites have been focused for several years on a variety of suspected underground test sites.

North Korea's decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan and Israel as one of the world's "undeclared" nuclear powers. India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a weapon. But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, the North has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its abilities.

The North's decision to set off a nuclear device could profoundly change the politics of Asia.

The explosion occurred only a week after Japan installed a new, more nationalistic prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and just as the country was renewing a debate about whether its ban on possessing nuclear weapons - deeply felt in a country that saw two of its cities incinerated in 1945 - still makes strategic sense.

And it shook the peninsula just as Abe was arriving in South Korea for the first time as prime minister, in an effort to repair a badly strained relationship, having just visited with Chinese leaders in Beijing. It places his untested administration in the midst of one of the region's biggest security crises in years, and one whose outcome will be watched closely in Iran and other states suspected of attempting to follow the path that North Korea has taken.

Now, Tokyo and Washington are expected to put even more pressure on the South Korean government to terminate its "sunshine policy" of trade, tourism and openings to the North - a policy that has been the source of enormous tension between Seoul and Washington since Bush took office.

The explosion was the product of nearly four decades of work by North Korea, one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries. The nation of 23 million people appears constantly fearful that its far richer, more powerful neighbors - and particularly the United States - will try to unseat its leadership. The country's founder, Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, emerged from the Korean War determined to equal the power of the United States, and acutely aware that General Douglas MacArthur had requested nuclear weapons to use against his country.

But it took decades to put together the technology, and only in the past few years has the North appeared to have made a political decision to speed forward. "I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could mess with them, and they weren't going to be deterred, not even by the Chinese," a senior American official who deals with the North said late Sunday evening. "In the end, there was just no stopping them."

But the explosion was also the product of more than two decades of diplomatic failure, spread over at least three presidencies. American spy satellites saw the North building a good-size nuclear reactor in the early 1980s, and by the early 1990s the CIA estimated that the country could have one or two nuclear weapons. But a series of diplomatic efforts to "freeze" the nuclear program - including a 1994 accord signed with the Clinton administration - ultimately broke down, amid distrust and recriminations on both sides.

Three years ago, as Bush was sending U.S. troops toward Iraq, the North threw out the few remaining arms inspectors living at their nuclear complex in Yongbyon, and moved 8,000 nuclear fuel rods they had kept under lock and key. Those rods contained enough plutonium, experts said, to produce five or six nuclear weapons, though it is unclear how many the North now stockpiles.

For years, some diplomats assumed that the North was using that ambiguity to trade away its nuclear capability, for recognition, security guarantees, aid and trade with the West. But in the end, the country's reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, who inherited the mantle of leadership from his father appears to have concluded that the surest way of getting what he seeks is to show that he has the capability to strike back if attacked.

Assessing the nature of that ability is difficult. If the test occurred as the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Some experts cautioned that it could try to fake an explosion, setting off conventional explosives; the only way to know for sure will be if American "sniffer" planes, patrolling the North Korean coast, pick up evidence of nuclear byproducts in the air.

Even then, it is not clear that the North could fabricate that bomb into a weapon that could fit atop its missiles, one of the country's few significant exports.

The North has active missile programs, but it isn't believed to have an atomic bomb design small and light enough to be mounted on a long-range

rocket that could strike targets as far as the United States.

But the big fear about North Korea, American officials have long said, has less to do with its ability to lash out than it does with its proclivity to proliferate. The country has sold its missiles and other weapons to Iran, Syria and Pakistan; at various moments in the six-party talks that have gone on for the past few years, North Korean representatives have threatened to sell nuclear weapons. But in a statement issued last week, announcing that it intended to set off a test, the country said it would not sell its nuclear products.

The fear of proliferation prompted Bush to declare in 2003 that the United States would never "tolerate" a nuclear-armed North Korea. He has never defined what he means by "tolerate," and on Sunday night Tony Snow, Bush's press secretary, said that, assuming the report of the test is accurate, the United States would now go to the United Nations to determine "what our next steps should be in response to this very serious step."

Nuclear testing is often considered a necessary step to proving a weapon's reliability as well as the most forceful way for a nation to declare its status as a nuclear power.

"Once they do that, it's serious," said Harold Agnew, a former chief of the Los Alamos weapons lab, in New Mexico, which designed most of the nation's nuclear arms. "Otherwise, the North Koreans are just jerking us around."

David E. Sanger reported for The New York Times in Washington and Choe Sang-Hun for the International Herald Tribune in Seoul. William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, and Thom Shanker from Washington.
North Korea said Monday that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it had joined the club of nuclear weapons states. The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.

It also followed repeated warnings from Washington to Beijing that a test would invite harsher economic sanctions against the already impoverished, isolated country.

The North Korean move to prove itself a nuclear power not only complicated U.S. efforts to tame Iran's nuclear ambitions but also set a precedent with far-reaching implications, officials and experts say. Unlike India and Pakistan, which have never promised not to develop nuclear weapons, North Korea had first joined a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty, then quit it and developed a nuclear arsenal, experts said.

China called the test a "flagrant and brazen" violation of international opinion, and said it "firmly opposes" North Korea's conduct.

"This is a grave threat that shakes stability and peace in Northeast Asia," said a statement from the office of President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea. "Our government will react sternly under our principle that we can never tolerate the North Korean possession of nuclear weapons."

Speaking at a news conference in Seoul, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan called the test an "unpardonable act."

The United States condemned the claim by North Korea that it had conducted a nuclear test as a "provocative act" and called for immediate action by the UN Security Council.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude on the Korean Peninsula.

[Benjamin]

Fortsetzung:

The nuclear test took place under a tunnel beneath a mountain near Mususan-ri, a remote village on North Korea's northeast coast, where the North Korean military launched seven missiles on July 5, according to South Korean lawmakers who attended a closed-door briefing by South Korea's main government spy agency, the National Intelligence Service.

In its official announcement of a nuclear test, North Korea said it marked "a great leap forward in the building of a great, prosperous, powerful socialist nation," and "will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."

Analysts in the region were divided over whether China and South Korea would impose the kind of severe sanctions championed by hawks in Washington and Tokyo - including an immediate stop on oil shipments, trade and aid, as well as the intercepting of North Korean ships - that could unleash instability in North Korea or could trigger more provocations by the North, such as missile tests or armed clashes on the border with the South.

On Monday, South Korea warned North Korea against making such a "mistake" along the inter-Korean border, the world's most heavily armed frontier, because the United States and South Korean militaries are "fully ready to repel any provocation by the North."

Baek Seung Joo, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul said, "China may agree with the United States that North Korea with nuclear weapons should be under the rule of a leader more rational than Kim Jong Il," whose regime has repeatedly flouted international treaties and has a history of proliferating weapons technology. "The North Korean regime will face the worst yet environment for survival."

Andrei Lankov, a Russian born expert on North Korea who is teaching at Seoul's Kookmin University, said that China, South Korea and Russia would join in sanctions against North Korea, but not for long. Soon enough, they will find excuses, such as famine in North Korea, to resume aid shipments to North Korea and prop up the regime, he said.

"We are going to see a lot of hysterics and tough talk. When all these hysterics are over, things will go back to business as usual, in half a year or in a year or so," Lankov said.

Sanctions at least will have no immediate impact on North Korea, where they are more likely to incite deeper anti-American hatred than anti-Kim Jong Il discontent among the North's 22 million people, who have lived under decades of totalitarian brain-washing, experts say.

Surgical strikes against North Korea's nuclear facilities are highly unlikely because the facilities are hard to detect in a country that keeps most of its key military facilities underground and also because China and South Korea fear such attacks could lead to a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula, they said.

In South Korea, officials said they believed that an explosion occurred around 10:36 a.m. Monday.

South Korean seismologists, on a round-the-clock alert for signs of a nuclear test in North Korea, detected an underground explosion that triggered a tremor with a magnitude of 3.58 to 3.7, said Yoon Tae Young, spokesman for the presidential Blue House.

That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away.

The Chinese, who have been North Korea's main ally for 60 years but have grown increasingly frustrated by its defiance of Beijing, sent an emergency alert to Washington through the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Within minutes, President George W. Bush was notified by his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, that a test was imminent.

South Korea immediately dispatched more guards along its tense border with North Korea, said the office of the South Korean military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The suspected test site was located in a region of North Hamgyong Province where American spy satellites have been focused for several years on a variety of suspected underground test sites.

North Korea's decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan and Israel as one of the world's "undeclared" nuclear powers. India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a weapon. But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, the North has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its abilities.

The North's decision to set off a nuclear device could profoundly change the politics of Asia.

The explosion occurred only a week after Japan installed a new, more nationalistic prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and just as the country was renewing a debate about whether its ban on possessing nuclear weapons - deeply felt in a country that saw two of its cities incinerated in 1945 - still makes strategic sense.

And it shook the peninsula just as Abe was arriving in South Korea for the first time as prime minister, in an effort to repair a badly strained relationship, having just visited with Chinese leaders in Beijing. It places his untested administration in the midst of one of the region's biggest security crises in years, and one whose outcome will be watched closely in Iran and other states suspected of attempting to follow the path that North Korea has taken.

Now, Tokyo and Washington are expected to put even more pressure on the South Korean government to terminate its "sunshine policy" of trade, tourism and openings to the North - a policy that has been the source of enormous tension between Seoul and Washington since Bush took office.

The explosion was the product of nearly four decades of work by North Korea, one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries. The nation of 23 million people appears constantly fearful that its far richer, more powerful neighbors - and particularly the United States - will try to unseat its leadership. The country's founder, Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, emerged from the Korean War determined to equal the power of the United States, and acutely aware that General Douglas MacArthur had requested nuclear weapons to use against his country.

But it took decades to put together the technology, and only in the past few years has the North appeared to have made a political decision to speed forward. "I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could mess with them, and they weren't going to be deterred, not even by the Chinese," a senior American official who deals with the North said late Sunday evening. "In the end, there was just no stopping them."

But the explosion was also the product of more than two decades of diplomatic failure, spread over at least three presidencies. American spy satellites saw the North building a good-size nuclear reactor in the early 1980s, and by the early 1990s the CIA estimated that the country could have one or two nuclear weapons. But a series of diplomatic efforts to "freeze" the nuclear program - including a 1994 accord signed with the Clinton administration - ultimately broke down, amid distrust and recriminations on both sides.

Three years ago, as Bush was sending U.S. troops toward Iraq, the North threw out the few remaining arms inspectors living at their nuclear complex in Yongbyon, and moved 8,000 nuclear fuel rods they had kept under lock and key. Those rods contained enough plutonium, experts said, to produce five or six nuclear weapons, though it is unclear how many the North now stockpiles.

For years, some diplomats assumed that the North was using that ambiguity to trade away its nuclear capability, for recognition, security guarantees, aid and trade with the West. But in the end, the country's reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, who inherited the mantle of leadership from his father appears to have concluded that the surest way of getting what he seeks is to show that he has the capability to strike back if attacked.

Assessing the nature of that ability is difficult. If the test occurred as the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Some experts cautioned that it could try to fake an explosion, setting off conventional explosives; the only way to know for sure will be if American "sniffer" planes, patrolling the North Korean coast, pick up evidence of nuclear byproducts in the air.

Even then, it is not clear that the North could fabricate that bomb into a weapon that could fit atop its missiles, one of the country's few significant exports.

The North has active missile programs, but it isn't believed to have an atomic bomb design small and light enough to be mounted on a long-range

rocket that could strike targets as far as the United States.

But the big fear about North Korea, American officials have long said, has less to do with its ability to lash out than it does with its proclivity to proliferate. The country has sold its missiles and other weapons to Iran, Syria and Pakistan; at various moments in the six-party talks that have gone on for the past few years, North Korean representatives have threatened to sell nuclear weapons. But in a statement issued last week, announcing that it intended to set off a test, the country said it would not sell its nuclear products.

The fear of proliferation prompted Bush to declare in 2003 that the United States would never "tolerate" a nuclear-armed North Korea. He has never defined what he means by "tolerate," and on Sunday night Tony Snow, Bush's press secretary, said that, assuming the report of the test is accurate, the United States would now go to the United Nations to determine "what our next steps should be in response to this very serious step."

North Korea reports first nuclear test

North Korea said Monday that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the club of nuclear weapons states. The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.

In this image taken from North Korean television, a broadcaster reports on the nuclear test.

Nuclear testing is often considered a necessary step to proving a weapon's reliability as well as the most forceful way for a nation to declare its status as a nuclear power.

"Once they do that, it's serious," said Harold Agnew, a former chief of the Los Alamos weapons lab, in New Mexico, which designed most of the nation's nuclear arms. "Otherwise, the North Koreans are just jerking us around."

Senior U.S. officials said they had little reason to doubt the announcement, and warned the test would usher in a new era of confrontation with the isolated and unpredictable country run by President Kim Jong Il, center. North Korea's decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan and Israel as one of the world's "undeclared" nuclear powers. By actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, the North has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its abilities.

Networks of seismometers that detect faint trembles in the earth and track distant rumbles are the best way to spot an underground nuclear test. On instruments for detecting earthquakes, such a blast would measure a magnitude of about 4.

A seismic wave measurement being displayed at the Meteorological Agency in Tokyo. Japan is reported to have observed a magnitude 4.9 quake in the northeast region of North Korea where Pyongyang claims to have conducted its test.

Assessing the nature of North Korea's nuclear ability is difficult. It is unclear whether the test was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Even then, it is not clear that the North could fabricate that bomb into a weapon that could fit atop its missiles.

A South Korean soldier at a check point in Paju near the demilitarized zone on Monday. South Korea's Defense Ministry said the alert level of the military had been raised in response to the test.


The explosion was the product of nearly four decades of work by North Korea, one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries. The nation of 23 million people appears constantly fearful that its far richer, more powerful neighbors - and particularly the United States - will try to unseat its leadership.

The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on Monday.


"This is a grave threat that shakes stability and peace in Northeast Asia," said a statement from the office of President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea. "Our government will react sternly under our principle that we can never tolerate the North Korean possession of nuclear weapons." China called the test a "flagrant and brazen" violation of international opinion, and said it "firmly opposes" North Korea's conduct.

South Koreans in Seoul watch a television report about North Korea's nuclear test .


Speaking at a news conference in Seoul, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan called the test an "unpardonable act." The United States condemned the claim by North Korea that it had conducted a nuclear test as a "provocative act" and called for immediate action by the UN Security Council.


The test occurred just as Abe was arriving in South Korea for the first time as the Japanese leader. It places his untested administration in the midst of one of the region's biggest security crises in years, and one whose outcome will be watched closely in Iran and other states suspected of attempting to follow the path that North Korea has taken.

Abe, front left, reviews an honor guard with Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon of South Korea, front right, after his arrival in Seoul.


David E. Sanger reported for The New York Times in Washington and Choe Sang-Hun for the International Herald Tribune in Seoul. William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

[Benjamin]

Text of North Korea's nuke announcement
Updated 10/9/2006 9:13 AM ET
The Associated Press

North Korea said Monday it had conducted its first nuclear weapons test. The text of the announcement by the country's official Korean Central News Agency follows . The formal name for North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK and KPA refers to the Korean People's Army:

"The field of scientific research in the DPRK successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions on October 9, 2006, at a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great, prosperous, powerful socialist nation.

"It has been confirmed that there was no such danger as radioactive emission in the course of the nuclear test as it was carried out under scientific consideration and careful calculation.

"The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100%. It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the KPA and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability.

"It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."


------------------------------------------------
Bush: North Korea defies international community
October 9, 2006, WASHINGTON (CNN) --

The text of President Bush's statement Monday morning on North Korea's reported nuclear test:

BUSH: Last night, the government of North Korea proclaimed to the world that it had conducted a nuclear test. We're working to confirm North Korea's claim.

Nonetheless, such a claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The United States condemns this provocative act.

Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond.

This was confirmed this morning in conversations I had with leaders of China and South Korea, Russia and Japan. We reaffirmed our commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. And all of us agreed that the proclaimed actions taken by North Korea are unacceptable and deserve an immediate response by the United Nations Security Council.

The North Korean regime remains one of the world's leading proliferators of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria.

The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable forthe consequences of such action.

The United States remains committed to diplomacy. And we will continue to protect ourselves and our interests.

I reaffirmed to our allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan, that the United States will meet the full range of our deterrent and security commitments.

Threats will not lead to a brighter future for the North Korean people, nor weaken the resolve of the United States and our allies to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Today's claim by North Korea serves only to raise tensions, while depriving the North Korean people of the increased prosperity and better relations with the world offered by the implementation of the joint statement of the six-party talks.

The oppressed and impoverished people of North Korea deserve that brighter future.

Thank you.

[PC-Oldie-Udo]

Genau das ist ja der Gag - mir ist auch in den seltensten Fällen klar, warum die Preise erhöht werden ...

Omi hat es verstanden

[Benjamin]

Why missile tests worked for Kim Jong Il
7/10/2006
By Robert Marquand, The Christian Science Monitor

It's summertime in Pyongyang, and if you are Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, life may be pretty good. The tension and crisis needed to keep your regime active and edgy are in full swing.
Certainly, Kim's thoughts and strategy are a mystery. But, longtime Pyongyang watchers say, it is clear that Kim does not want integration into the liberal, global order. Rather, his role is as a divinely mandated leader whose people live to serve him. In that role, Kim has much to be upbeat about in the past week after his missile test, and can tell himself a story such as this, they say:

You are supreme general of the fifth-largest army in the world, and your missile program just made a major military statement. You were told not to test missiles, and you did. As a result, the world jumped. You are getting more media than Iran. Most importantly, you provoked the Americans, your sworn enemy for 50 years — and they did nothing. Chinese envoys arrived Monday with a message from President Bush. Propaganda in the near term is easy: You show the Americans crawling to get you back to talks.

You are the son of great leader Kim Il Sung, and you run the country, control the thoughts, and guide the people. Aides follow you with notepads, taking down every word, and publishing it as pure gold. You can go back to six-party talks, or not, depending on what's to get.

Over the years, the West's perceptions of Kim are caricatures. He's a petulant "shrimp" (to use his own words) with out-of-control hair who wears high heels, snacks on caviar, kidnaps film directors, avoids air travel, and loves the Internet. Most of these snapshots came prior to 1994, when Kim took over from his father, who was greatly beloved by North Koreans. Yet most interlocutors say he's a shrewd and self-aware individual, though not a larger-than-life revolutionary figure like the senior Kim.

The crucial misconceptions about Kim run deeper, analysts say. For example, he is not, as often portrayed, a Marxist, a Stalinist, or even a fascist. He is a military-cult nationalist whose father's ideology of juche — a policy of extreme national self-reliance — operates in a heavily guarded Orwellian state.

Moreover, despite rumors, there is little evidence that Kim is in anything but complete control. While sometimes portrayed as worried about a U.S. attack, North Korea has rarely if ever shown such fear. In fact, just the opposite is true: North Korea has often provoked the allied nations. Soviet archives show that Kim's father tried to cajole Moscow into attacking South Korea in the 1960s, despite a U.S. nuclear threat.

"On the whole the regime and Kim are pretty confident right now," says Alexandre Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Strategic Studies in Honolulu. "He has things where he wants them."

Some observers think Kim may return to the table. "Now that he's shot the missiles, Kim can go back to the talks," says Scott Snyder, Korea specialist with the Asia Foundation, based at Stanford University. "He no longer has to go out of weakness. He is strong. It seems counterintuitive, but that's the logic of small states, and a traditional North Korean negotiation tactic."

Yet while Kim may want to return to the table, this doesn't mean he has in mind a U.S.-guided outcome. He can use negotiations for whatever purpose he wishes, or not, say analysts. Some think the notion that Kim is desperate for talks is a misunderstanding.

"Kim is not begging to return to six-party talks," argues Brian Myers, at the Department of North Koreanology at Korea University. "Kim is general, the 'military-first' architect. The last thing he wants is normalization with the enemy, or talks on prosperity. That puts him out unloading aid crates at the airport. He craves tension and crisis, and that's what he's got."

Contrary to initial military analysis in the West, which focused on the failure of the Taepodong-2, Kim showed that his medium-range missiles are a threat to U.S. bases and Japan. He is estimated to have more than 100 medium-range rockets.

"He has gratified his technical specialists and a military constituency," notes Snyder. "They demonstrated a capability for night launches, multiple launches, and the rockets send a signal that his ability to deliver in South Korea goes past just an artillery barrage of Seoul."

The mountains outside Seoul on the North Korea side are considered to be one of the densest artillery lineups in the world, capable of hammering Seoul. In the past two years, U.S. forces have decamped from the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea, and have moved their main headquarters out of Seoul, a long-standing request of South Korea.

To be sure, propaganda and news out of Pyongyang continues to be highly militarized. North Korean TV put out a military-first propaganda statement from "General Kim" monitored by Yonhap news, saying, "it is not empty talk for the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] to respond with revenge to revenge by the enemy, and with all-out war to an all out war."

Many Chinese scholars agree that Kim is not a Marxist or Stalinist. "The juche idea occupies Kim's mind, and he tries to maximize his national interest," says Chen Sengjun, Korea specialist at Beijing University. "Marxism claims internationalism and rationality. But Kim puts his national interests in a supreme priority...."

Myers, of Korea University, argues that Pyongyang is a "paranoid nationalist" regime that needs an enemy to perpetually engage it so it retains a sense of purpose in the face of all odds.

North Korea has long crossed red lines to test reaction. The Pueblo incident of 1968, when North Korea captured a U.S. patrol boat, and the gruesome Panmunjom ax murders of 1976, when North Koreans rushed the DMZ to club to death two GIs who were trimming a poplar tree — are examples.

"The North crosses every red line it can find, and does in the face of the world," says Myers, author of a book on North Korean literary styles. "This is characterized internally as signs of strength. In the 'Agreed Framework' of 1994, they presented the Americans as crawling to the negotiating table, as a surrender."

The Korean News Service says the nation is ready for total war: "We should respond to the enemy's knife with a sword and to the enemy's gun with a cannon."

Korea was bisected after World War II in what many historians now call a thoughtless if not reckless bit of diplomacy. The brutal and bloody Korean War never truly ended, but was halted in 1953 with an armistice.

The North became a protectorate of Moscow, and to some extent Beijing. The sea-locked South integrated with the international community. Seoul is capital of what has become the 10th-largest economy in the world, a considerable achievement for 48 million people.

The North began to languish seriously after the Soviet Union broke up, living hand-to-mouth in a state of poverty, scarcely able to put gas in its few vehicles or power its cities. Most resources are spent on the army, the elite in Pyongyang, and in a massive disciplinary state security apparatus. In recent years, China has begun to help its neighbor with aid.

[Benjamin]

Report: North Korea launches 7th missile
7/5/2006
By Susan Page, David Jackson and Bill Nichols, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON —

North Korea test-fired a seventh missile Wednesday, South Korean officials said, intensifying the furor ignited when the reclusive regime launched at least six missiles earlier in the day.
An official at the South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed that North Korea had tested a seventh missile that was either short- or medium-range. The official had no additional details.

Japan's Kyodo News agency reported that the missile landed six minutes after launch, but did not say where. The chief of Russia's general staff said that Russian tracking systems showed that Pyongyang may have launched up to 10 missiles during the day, the Interfax news agency reported.

Defense officials could not immediately confirm the report. It was unclear what type of missile was launched or where it landed.

North Korea defied international objections and prompted a diplomatic scramble Tuesday by launching a long-range missile capable of reaching the USA, U.S. officials said. The Taepodong-2 missile failed within a minute and landed in the sea.

At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton held what he called "urgent" consultations. The Security Council was likely to meet today, spokesman Richard Grennell said. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was being dispatched to Asia as early as this morning.

In Japan, government spokesman Shinzo Abe threatened economic sanctions.

While the test launches of the Taepodong-2 and five shorter-range missiles didn't pose a military threat, they ignited a firestorm among governments that have been working to restrain North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

North Korea may have as many as 13 nuclear weapons, according to the Institute for Science and Security, a Washington think tank. The Taepodong-2 is believed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and its reported 9,320-mile range means it could reach major cities on the U.S. West Coast.

"In doing this, the North Koreans have once again isolated themselves; they have defied their neighbors," White House press secretary Tony Snow said. President Bush had been conferring with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Snow said.

The launches appeared to be an effort by North Korea and its reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, to get the attention of the United States with a trademark bit of stagecraft and timing, said Michael O'Hanlon, a military affairs analyst at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Doing this on the Fourth of July was probably irresistible to them," he said.

North Korea launched the missiles before dawn today local time, which was Tuesday afternoon in most of the USA. The first launch came at 2:33 p.m. ET. That was five minutes before the space shuttle Discovery lifted off in Florida and as the capital prepared for the traditional Fourth of July fireworks display on the National Mall.

Snow said two short-range missiles were launched first, followed by the long-range missile at 4:01 p.m. and three more short-range missiles just after 6 p.m. All came down in the Sea of Japan, which separates Korea and Japan.

Alarm about the possible launch of the long-range missile had accelerated amid reports in recent weeks that North Korea was fueling the Taepodong-2.

National security adviser Stephen Hadley, who had called Bush to brief him, said the president wasn't surprised at the news "because we've seen this coming for a while."

Snow said the administration planned to move forward in "a cool and diplomatic" manner. "The last thing we want to do is escalate this," he said. Even so, "it is definitely a provocation."

[Benjamin]

Analysts: North Korean test more worrying than India-Pakistan blasts
10/9/2006
By Danny Kemp, AFP ISLAMABAD —

Eight years ago it was India and Pakistan who shocked the world with their underground atomic blasts, but North Korea's nuclear test on Monday is far more alarming, analysts said Monday.
In May 1998 a South Asian apocalypse suddenly seemed a possibility after the two rival nations carried out tit-for-tat tests — the last nuclear explosions until now.

News bulletins at the time showed footage of a barren yellow mountain in remote southwestern Pakistan shuddering with the sheer force of simultaneous detonations deep below the earth.

Yet the situation now is more serious, analysts said, particularly as Pyongyang may have learned lessons from Pakistan, whose disgraced nuclear hero provided North Korea with atomic secrets.

"I would say that this is much more significant," analyst and retired Pakistani Army General Talat Masood told AFP.

"In 1998 it was much more India-Pakistan specific, but the North Korean test means U.S. nuclear hegemony in East Asia has collapsed, the counter-proliferation policy by the U.S. has collapsed and their axis of evil policy has collapsed," he said.

Mainly Hindu India carried out its first nuclear test in secret in 1974. It had already fought three wars with Muslim-majority Pakistan since independence from Britain and their subsequent partition in 1947.

In 1998 New Delhi followed up by detonating five warheads beneath the Rajasthan desert between May 11 and 13.

Pakistan came under huge international pressure not to follow suit but it exploded five bombs in Baluchistan province on May 28 and another two days later.

The two countries became the world's sixth and seventh declared nuclear powers respectively, while Pakistan also emerged as the only nation in the Islamic world with the bomb.

"It's a formidable challenge for a country after they have detonated," said analyst Masood. "There is fear of the unknown, as to how the world will react, what the consequences are, what the sanctions will be."

Major powers did impose strict sanctions but they evaporated after a time. Pakistan joined the U.S.-led "war on terror" in 2001, while Washington earlier this year offered India a civilian nuclear power deal.

Naresh Chandra, who was India's ambassador to Washington when India conducted the nuclear tests, said North Korea may have been influenced by Pakistan's escape from U.S. sanctions.

"Pakistan got off lightly even after the A.Q. Khan network was exposed. The U.S. believed their version of the story and they were let off easily. They also got economic aid and financial support," Chandra said.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's former chief atomic scientist, admitted in 2004 that he had provided nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. The government denied its involvement but gave him a pardon.

President Pervez Musharraf admits that Khan sold Pyongyang around a dozen centrifuges to enrich uranium, but Pakistan says that North Korea's test bomb was likely plutonium-based.

The Pakistani foreign office on Monday denied that the North Korean bomb test was linked to A.Q. Khan's activities and said it "deplored" the test."

"There was also a bit of a cover up when China helped Pakistan and North Korea with nuclear and weapons technology and the U.S. turned a blind eye to this," Chandra added.

"Perhaps North Korea thinks the U.S. will look the other way again."

C.U. Bhaskar, a defense analyst with the New Delhi-based Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis — a government-funded military think-tank — said North Korea was counting on getting more international clout.

"The test allows North Korea to enter the six-party talks as a nuclear weapon state on par with China, Russia and the United States," he said.

Pyongyang has boycotted the stalled six-nation talks on its nuclear program since last November.

"This changes the contours of things," said Bhaskar.
--------------

NUCLEAR WEAPONS STATES

A glance at the world's nuclear weapons states and their stockpiles, based on estimates compiled from different sources:

North Korea
Believed to have enough fissile material for about a half-dozen weapons, but estimates vary widely and are unverifiable.

U.S.
More than 5,000 strategic warheads, more than 1,000 operational tactical weapons meant for the battlefield and less powerful than the strategic arms and approximately 3,000 reserve and tactical warheads.

Russia
Nearly 5,000 strategic warheads, and approximately 3,500 operational tactical warheads. In addition, it has more than 11,000 strategic and tactical warheads in storage.

France
Approximately 350 strategic warheads.

China
As many as 250 strategic warheads and 150 tactical warheads.

Britain
About 200 strategic warheads.

India
Between 45 and 95 nuclear warheads.

Pakistan
Between 30 and 50 nuclear warheads.

Israel
Refuses to confirm it is a nuclear weapons state but is generally assumed to have up to 200 nuclear warheads.

Sources: Arms Control Association; Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Associated Press

[PC-Oldie-Udo]

Hi Benjamin

wir sind hier in Deutschland, versuch mal deutsche Artikel zu finden, ist nicht so anstrengend

[simplify]

der UNO sicherheitsrat hat den atombombentest am abend auf's schärfste verurteilt. konkrete sanktionen hat man noch nicht beschlossen. ich denke das dürfte auch schwierig werden. die chinesen haben wohl kein interesse an der ablösung der steinzeitkommunisten.

wichtiger als der bombentest ist ja eigentlich auch, ob die nordkoreaner über entsprechende trägerraketen verfügen. sicher, bis südkorea reicht es immer und vielleicht sogar bis japan