|
5 Apr 2009 - NKorea launches rocket, defying world pressure
|
North Korea defied international warnings and sent a rocket hurtling over the Pacific on Sunday, a launch President Barack Obama called an illicit test of the regime's long-range missile technology that threatened the security of nations "near and far."
Obama and European Union leaders meeting in Prague condemned the move and said North Korea's dangerous defiance demanded an international response. Diplomats at the United Nations scheduled an emergency Security Council session for later Sunday to discuss what Obama called a clear violation of U.N. resolutions.
The U.S. and South Korea say no satellite or other object reached orbit Sunday, and joined Japan and other countries in accusing the North of using the launch to test the delivery system for its long-range missile technology — a step toward eventually mounting a nuclear weapon on a missile capable of reaching Alaska and beyond.
"North Korea's development of a ballistic missile capability, regardless of the stated purpose of this launch, is aimed at providing it with the ability to threaten countries near and far with weapons of mass destruction," a joint EU-U.S. statement said.Obama outlines sweeping goal of nuclear-free world
PRAGUE – Declaring the future of mankind at stake, President Barack Obama said Sunday all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms and that the U.S. had a "moral responsibility" to lead as the only country ever to use one.
"This fatalism is a deadly adversary," he told a crowd of more than 20,000 in an old square outside the Prague Castle gates. "For if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable."
Calling nuclear arms "the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War," Obama appealed to anti-nuclear activists in the United States and abroad while taking care to promise that America's national security would not be compromised.
He chose as the venue for his address a nation that peacefully threw off communism and helped topple nuclear power Soviet Union. "Let us honor our past," Obama said, "by reaching for a better future."
|
|
|
| |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
![[Powered By MySQL]](/images/mysql-04.gif)
Copyright Notice: All entries are copyright (and the responsibility of) their respective authors.
