South Korean soldiers man a cannon at a military training field in the border city of Paju, yesterday.
LONDON/SEOUL: North Korea asked embassies to consider moving staff out and warned it cannot guarantee diplomats’ safety after Wednesday, Britain said yesterday.
It follows declarations by Pyongyang that conflict is inevitable, because of what it terms “hostile” US troop exercises with South Korea and UN sanctions over nuclear weapons testing.
The question is not whether, but when a war would break out on the peninsula because of the “increasing threat from the US”, China’s state news agency Xinhua quoted the North’s Foreign Ministry as saying.
North Korea would provide safe locations for diplomats in accordance with the Vienna Convention, Xinhua quoted the ministry as saying in a notification to embassies.
Britain said its embassy was told by Pyongyang that it “would be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organisations in the country in the event of conflict from April 10.” It said it had “no immediate plans” to evacuate its embassy.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said North Korea had “proposed that the Russian side consider the evacuation of employees in the increasingly tense situation”.
Moscow said it was “seriously studying” the request. The ministry said Russia hoped all parties would show restraint and considered “whipping up military hysteria to be categorically unacceptable.”
Experts say North Korea might be able to hit some part of the US, but not the mainland and not with a nuclear weapon. The North Koreans “are not suicidal. They know that any kind of direct attack (on the US) would be end of their country,” said Gary Samore, until recently the top nuclear proliferation expert on President Barack Obama’s national security staff.
South Korean media reported that North had placed two intermediate-range missiles on mobile launchers and hidden them on the east coast in a move that could threaten Japan or US Pacific bases. One is the Musudan missile which Seoul estimates has a range of up to 3,000km. The other is the KN-08, believed to be an inter-continental ballistic missile.
The Pentagon warned Pyongyang that further provocative action would be regrettable. “Missile tests outside their international obligations would be a provocative act. They need to follow international norms and abide by their commitments.”
Representative Ed Royce, a Republican who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for nations to seek the collapse of North Korea’s regime through economic pressure, saying the latest crisis showed the failure of years of diplomacy.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard called South Korean President Park Geun-hye and expressed full support for Seoul.
But Iranian armed forces deputy chief Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said North Korea had no choice but to “confront” the US. “Tensions in the region are due to excessive demands by the US... and its tightening of the noose on North Korea,” Fars news agency quoted him as saying.
In Brussels, sources said diplomats of the seven EU countries with embassies in North Korea — Britain, Germany, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Sweden — were assessing the situation.
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro warned ally North Korea against war and described tensions on the Korean Peninsula as one of the “gravest risks” for nuclear holocaust since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, was deeply alarmed, though UN humanitarian workers remain active across North Korea for the time being, a spokesman said. Agencies
