Several Japanese government officials have publicly said that Tokyo should consider a “pre-emptive” military strike against missile facilities in north Korea.

Christopher Hill, Washington’s top diplomat to stalled six-party talks on the DPRK’s development of nuclear technology, began a trip to several capital cities July 7 to gain support for the resolution. The talks involve the governments of the United States, Japan, China, Russia, south Korea, and the DPRK.

The UN Security Council agreed to postpone briefly a July 10 vote on the resolution in light of an ongoing visit to north Korea by a high-level Chinese delegation to try to get the six-party talks going again. Pyongyang says it will resume the talks once Washington lifts its economic sanctions against it.

Beijing and Moscow, two of five permanent members of the Security Council, oppose the UN resolution. Each permanent member of the council has veto power.

The draft resolution condemns north Korea’s missile testing; calls on Pyongyang to “immediately cease the development, testing, deployment and proliferation of ballistic missiles”; and demands it restore a moratorium on missile launches.

The resolution also calls for preventing the “transfer of financial resources, items, materials, goods and technology that could contribute to DPRK’s missile and other WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs.”

Last September the U.S. government accused a bank in Macau, Banco Delta Asia, of counterfeiting and other illicit financial activities on behalf of the DPRK. The following month eight north Korean firms were “blacklisted” by the U.S. Treasury Department.

A DPRK foreign ministry spokesperson called the missile test an “exercise of its legitimate right as a sovereign state,” reported the Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. He said the long-range missile test-fire moratorium, agreed to with the Clinton administration, was no longer valid because of the Bush administration’s policy against direct talks with Pyongyang. “We would like to ask the U.S. and Japan if they had ever notified the DPRK of their ceaseless launches,” he added.

Kim Hyong Jun, north Korea’s vice minister for foreign affairs, told the press during a visit to South Africa that “the U.S. has announced that it will embark on a month-long military exercise in the Korean peninsula from the 25th of this month to the end of July. This is a serious threat to the sovereignty of a country.”  
 
Washington presses campaign
U.S. president George Bush called south Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to thank them for their sharp statements condemning Pyongyang's missile testing, which the White House labeled “provocative behavior.”

“We shouldn’t have business as usual with a country that's been firing off missiles like this in this rather reckless way,” said U.S. envoy Hill after arriving in Seoul. Hill made stops in Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, and Beijing.

Koizumi said that, pending the Chinese diplomatic visit to Pyongyang, his government would continue to seek an early vote on its resolution.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Shinzo Abe, said Tokyo should consider a “preemptive” strike against missile sites in the DPRK, according to a July 10 Associated Press dispatch. Abe, expected to replace Koizumi at the end of the prime minister’s term in September, has campaigned to change Japan’s constitution, which was imposed by the U.S. occupation following World War II. It prohibits Tokyo from developing offensive military capabilities.

Abe’s remarks follow a similar statement by the head of Japan's defense agency, Fukushiro Nukaga, that Tokyo should consider a military strike “if an enemy country definitely has a way of attacking Japan and has its finger on the trigger.”

The government in south Korea has responded sharply against the move to impose sanctions against the DPRK. “There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite,” said a statement from President Roh Moo-hyun’s office.

South Korean presidential spokesman Jung Tae-ho accused Tokyo of “arrogance and outrageous rhetoric that further intensifies the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.” Jung said Tokyo was using the missile tests as “a pretext for becoming a military power,” a reference to Japanese imperialism’s brutal occupation of much of Asia, including Korea, in the 1930s and 1940s.
 
 
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