North Korea said Tuesday that it is not bound by its own moratorium on long-range missile tests as tension over Pyongyang’s missile intentions kept mounting.
In Washington, a senior State Department official challenged the North Korean interpretation, saying that the United States expected the Pyongyang government to abide by its commitments.
A North Korean Foreign Ministry official told Japanese reporters that a missile test would not be “bound by any statement such as the Pyongyang Declaration,” Kyodo news agency reported. The agency quoted Ri Pyong Dok, the official, as saying: “This issue concerns our autonomy. Nobody has a right to slander that right.”
The Pyongyang Declaration, issued in 2002, was signed by North Korea leader Kim Jong Il and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. In it, North Korea pledged to extend a moratorium on ballistic missile launches.
But North Korea’s agreement not to conduct test launches of its long-range missiles is something less than a binding treaty.
Pyongyang agreed in 1999 to a moratorium on its long-range missile tests. Charles Kartman, who negotiated the measure at the time as the special U.S. envoy for negotiations with North Korea, said that the understanding was worked out on the assumption that the United States and North Korea would conduct negotiations on a U.S. proposal to ban the testing and development of long-range North Korean missiles. Negotiations have not been held since 2000.
“The moratorium was to be in effect only so long as the two sides were engaged in missile talks,” Kartman said in an interview. “The Bush administration’s disinterest in continuing the missile negotiations would have, of course, canceled out the 1999 moratorium.”
The North Koreans later agreed to extend the moratorium on missile tests as part of a separate 2002 understanding with the Japanese. In a joint declaration with Japan, North Korea “expressed its will to extend its moratorium on missile tests beyond 2003 in the spirit of the declaration,” according to an English-language translation of the declaration.
The Bush administration had taken the position that both moratoriums are in effect. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday said the United States would regard a missile launch as an “abrogation of obligations that North Korea undertook in the moratorium that they signed onto in 1999, that they reiterated in 2002.”
“A basic tenet of international relations is that when you say you’re going to do something, you do it,” a senior State Department official said Tuesday.
He asked that his name not be used because he wasn’t authorized to talk publicly on the issue.
The issue of the moratorium emerged along with reports that the United States has raised the alert status of its missile defense system. The Pentagon has deployed 11 interceptors in a test status in Alaska and California and has not conducted a successful intercept test in four years. Nonetheless, the Pentagon has asserted that the missiles could be activated if international events warranted.
