Nations on a knife-edge as North Korea threatens war over satellite

Published on Monday 9 March 2009 21:13

NORTH Korea put its troops on alert and cut the last hotline to Seoul yesterday, as the United States and South Korean militaries began joint manoeuvres.

The Communist regime warned that even the slightest provocation could trigger war, and said that would include any attempt to interfere with its impending launch of a satellite into orbit.

US and Japanese officials suspect the launch is a cover for a test of a long-range attack missile and have suggested they might move to intercept the rocket.

"Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war," North Korea's military said. Any interception attempt would draw "a just, retaliatory strike", it said.

"The danger of a military conflict is further increasing than ever before on the Korean Peninsula because of the sabre rattling which involves armed forces huge enough to fight a war," the North's news agency warned as Pyongyang put its armed forces on stand-by for combat.

South Korean and US commanders say the exercises are nothing more than the annual drills the two nations have held for years, while the North has condemned them as a rehearsal for invasion.

The North has been in a steady retreat from reconciliation since Lee Myung-bak became the South's president a year ago. Pyongyang cut ties, suspended joint projects and stepped up its belligerent rhetoric after Mr Lee said the North must continue dismantling its nuclear programme if it wanted aid.

Analysts say North Korea's latest outburst is designed to grab the attention of Barack Obama, the US president. With South Korea cutting off aid, the impoverished North is angling for the diplomatic coup of establishing direct ties with the US, they say.

For weeks, the North has said it is forging ahead with plans to send a communications satellite into space – a launch that US and Japanese officials say would violate a UN Security Council resolution banning the North from testing ballistic missiles.

In Seoul, Mr Obama's special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, urged Pyongyang not to fire the missile – he said it would be "extremely ill-advised".

South Korea's defence ministry played down the North's threats as "rhetoric" but said the country's military was ready to deal with any contingencies.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, severed the last communications link between the two governments for the 12 days of the US-South Korean military exercises. The North banned nearly all cross-border traffic in December amid deteriorating relations with Seoul, but allowed a skeleton staff of South Koreans to work at a joint industrial zone in Kaesong that is a crucial source of hard currency for the regime.

The two states had used the hotline to co-ordinate the passage of people and goods through the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), and its suspension shut down traffic and stranded about 570 South Koreans north of the border.

It leaves the two Koreas without any means of quick, direct communication at a time of high tension, when even an accidental skirmish could trigger fighting.

The two Koreas technically remain in a state of war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty. Hundreds of thousands of troops are massed on each side of the DMZ, and the US has about 28,000 military personnel in the South.