North Korea plans second rocket launch of 2012

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korea said it would carry out its second rocket launch of 2012 as its youthful leader Kim Jong-un flexes his muscles a year after his father's death, in a move that South Korea and the United States swiftly condemned as a provocation, Reuters reported.

North Korea's state news agency announced the decision to launch another space satellite on Saturday, Dec 1 just a day after Kim met a senior delegation from China's Communist Party in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

China, under new leadership, is North Korea's only major political backer and has continually urged peace on the Korean peninsula, where the North and South remain technically at war after an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, ended the 1950-53 conflict.

China's Foreign Ministry said it was deeply concerned by the move, but urged calm.

"North Korea has a right to the peaceful use of space, but this right has been restricted by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

(China) hopes all sides can do more to benefit peace and stability on the peninsula, and hopes all sides handle it calmly to avoid the situation escalating," ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the launch plan as a provocative threat to the Asia-Pacific region that would violate United Nations resolutions imposed on Pyongyang after past missile tests.

"A North Korean 'satellite' launch would be a highly provocative act that threatens peace and security in the region," she said in a written statement.