- WASHINGTON, June 20: The Pentagon has activated its new ground-based interceptor
missile defence system following a North Korean threat to test a long-range
missile, US media reported on Tuesday.
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- US officials said on Monday that any
long-range missile launch by North Korea would be considered a "provocative
act." US intelligence satellites monitoring N. Korean missile sites
reported this week that North Korea's preparations have advanced to the
point where a launch could take place within several days to a month.
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- Two US Navy Aegis warships are patrolling
near North Korea as part of the global missile defence and would be among
the first sensors that would trigger the use of interceptor missile, the
Washington Times reported on Tuesday.
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- The US missile defence system includes
11 long-range interceptor missiles, including nine deployed at Fort Greeley,
Alaska, and two at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The system was
switched from test to operational mode within the past two weeks, the report
said.
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- One senior Bush administration official
told the newspaper that an option being considered would be to shoot down
the Taepodong missile with responding interceptors.
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- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
added that any launch would be a serious matter and "would be taken
with utmost seriousness and indeed a provocative act."
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- White House spokesman Tony Snow told
reporters in Washington that President Bush had telephoned more than a
dozen heads of state regarding North Korea's launch preparations. He did
not identify the leaders.
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- Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said
the US has made it clear to North Korea that the communist regime should
abide by the missile-test ban it imposed in 1999 and reaffirmed in a pact
with Japan in 2002.
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- "US Northern Command continues
to monitor the situation, and we are prepared to defend the country in
any way necessary," said spokesman Michael Kucharek.
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- Any decision to shoot down a missile
would be made at the highest command levels, which includes the president,
secretary of defence and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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- John R. Bolton, the US ambassador to
the United Nations, said earlier that the Bush administration is consulting
other Security Council members on how to respond to a Taepodong launch.
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- US intelligence officials told reporters
there are signs that the North Koreans recently began fuelling the Taepodong
with highly corrosive rocket fuel. Normally, when liquid fuel is loaded
into missiles the missile must be fired within five to 10 days, or it must
be de-fuelled and the motors cleaned, a difficult and hazardous process.
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- The Taepodong was first tested in August
1998, and North Korea claimed that it was a space launch vehicle that orbited
a satellite.
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