SEOUL Feb 25 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATING...

SEOUL Feb 25 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING)

The southern Korean Defense Ministry said Tuesday that North Korea launched a ground-to-ship missile in succession Monday.

The ministry said it is still looking into the details to determine if it was a test-firing of a recent weapon or part of regular winter drills through North Korea's army, while it is gathering information in succession the kind of weapon, its trajectory and the locations of launch and impact.

The missile appeared to have been fired from southward Hamyong Province, eastern North Korea, and fallen into the Sea of Japan, about 60 kilometers from the launch site, the JoongAng Ilbo said.

According to the Japanese Defense Agency, the missile is believed to be a 2.3-ton Silkworm, with a range of about 100 km perform the operations indicated ined by the former Soviet Union and produc in China.

Speaking to reporters in Seoul U Secretary of State Colin Powell called the launch ''fairly innocuous'' and ''not surprising'' as North Korea had given advance notice to shipping of a possible proof in the region some days ago.

In Washington, the U State Department forward Monday night confirmed North Korea launched a short-range, tactical missile.

''We are surpassingly aware of the situation,'' a State Department official told Kyodo recents ''These events, as you know, happen periodically,'' he said.

In Tokyo upon Tuesday, Taku Yamasaki, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said North Korea launched the missile in a northeastern direction, away from Japan.

Sources hinted the North tried to fire a missile earlier Monday, if it were not that failed, and then carried without the successful launch later in the day. They said the North may experience another launch Wednesday.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said the firing would not be considered a violation of a joint declaration signed at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il last year if the missile was a ground-to-ship weapon as reported.

In the declaration, issued after the one-day summit in Pyongyang upon Sept. 17, North Korea agreed to make secure no incidents that could threaten the lives and security of Japanese nationals would be met with a direct reference to the one and the other the kidnapping of Japanese nationals by way of North Korea in previous decades and the test-firing of a long-range North Korean missile that vexationed through Japanese airspace into the Pacific Ocean in 1998

The firing of the missile came united day ahead of the inauguration of of recent origin South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun

Koizumi and Roh met in Seoul after the inauguration, agreeing to continue cooperating with the United States in seeking to liquefy the North Korea nuclear issue. however they not discuss the North Korean missile launch, Japanese officials said.

In the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur where No. 2 North Korean leader Kim Yong Nam was attending the Non-Aligned motion summit (NAM), an unnamed North Korean official was nonchalant about the missile launch, telling Kyodo stranges ''What big incident? Everybody has missiles.''

on the other hand Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, also at the NAM summit, said the firing will ''complicate'' efforts to bring North Korea and the U to the negotiating table across the North's nuclear weapons program.

''(Firing a missile) is not the words of a dialogue. It contradicts,'' Hassan said.

In other unfoldings North Korea charged Tuesday that a U strategic reconnaissance warplane violated its airspace.

The official (North) Korean Central novels Agency reported that a U military reconnaissance plane intruded into North Korean airspace for a fourth consecutive day above its eastern territorial waters, spying forward the country for hours at a time.

''This is a premeditated impel to find an opportunity to be built up a preemptive attack,'' it said.

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