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Report: North Korea Missile Preparations Ending
Activity around North Korea's missile launch sites is tailing off, calming fears of a ballistic missile test, a Japanese newspaper reported on Monday, citing government sources. The Yomiuri Shimbun said the Defense Ministry had called back a ship equipped with Aegis radar tracking equipment that was sent when satellite monitoring picked up increased activity around missile and other military bases in North Korea last month. "The series of moves appear to have been North Korean military training," the Yomiuri quoted a government source as saying. The paper quoted him as adding that about 70 percent of the activity had ceased.Japan has decided to move forward to the development stage on a next-generation missile defense system it has been working on with the United States, Kyodo news agency said on Monday. The decision, which Kyodo said was made under pressure from Washington, is bound to face domestic opposition because it will involve a review of Japan's ban on weapons exports. The government will make its final decision within the current financial year, which ends in March 2005, on whether to develop components for the system, Kyodo said. Japan recently decided to spend about 1 trillion yen ($9.1 billion) on an existing U.S.-made missile defense system, Kyodo said. Tokyo has also spent 15.6 billion yen on the joint research program for the next-generation system, which began in 1999, Kyodo said. Posted by: Steve White 2004-10-11 |
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