Experts argue if N. Korea's launch suggests progress

Experts argue if N. Korea's launch suggests progress
AP
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By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer Pamela Hess, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 33 mins ago

WASHINGTON – A top Pentagon official on Monday dismissed North Korea's rocket launch as a failure_ both technologically and as an effort to market its missiles to other countries. "Would you buy from somebody that had failed three times in a row and never been successful?" Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked during a press briefing at the Pentagon.

The abortive missile launch, Cartwright said, showed that North Korea had failed to master the midair thrust shift from one rocket booster to another, an integral part of ballistic missile technology.

North Korea's attempted launch of a three-stage rocket Sunday demonstrated only one minor victory: It went twice as far as one launched in 1998. It is still unclear what data North Korea's military and scientists might glean from their latest effort.

In diplomatic circles, whether Pyongyang is technically any closer to having a working ICBM is immaterial. Just the attempt defied a U.N. Security Council resolution that warned North Korea against a launch.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she is lobbying key members of the Security Council to respond to the launch, which she called "a provocative act that has grave implications."

Security Council members met for three hours Sunday but failed to release even a customary preliminary statement of condemnation. Its five veto-wielding permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — and Japan met privately for more than an hour Monday afternoon. No agreement was reached on a response to the missile launch, and the six ambassadors agreed to consult their capitals and meet again on Tuesday.

Experts are divided on whether the test demonstrated any new capacity in building a long-range missile in a faulty program that has made little linear progress.

Pyongyang does not appear to be using a traditional incremental approach to working out problems in the design and launch program. Instead, its scientists cobble together different stages and start over with a relatively fresh model each time, introducing new possibilities for error, said Charles Vick, a senior technical analyst with Globalsecurity.org.

"If you have multiple changes and the thing fails, which one worked and which ones didn't?" said Geoffrey Forden, an arms control expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

However, the first stage_ the large lower booster rocket responsible for getting the missile out of the earth's atmosphere_ appears to have worked. It splashed down in the Sea of Japan where the North Koreans predicted it would.

South Korea's mass-circulation newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported Monday that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities confirmed that the rocket's second stage landed in waters about 1,984 miles from the launch site, showing that North Korea has succeeded in about doubling the range compared to a 1998 launch.

However, the second stage fell well short of the planned impact point west of Japan, Vick said. According to the U.S. military, the second and third stages splashed down together. It is unclear whether they successfully separated.

"We can't tell how much, but they are very close together," Cartwright said.

If they did separate, that would suggest the second stage worked and the third stage was the problem. That might pave the way for a rapid follow-up launch.

Vick believes a new North Korea test of the same model, the Taeopodong-2, roughly equivalent to a U.S. Titan missile, is likely by the end of summer.

"They are going to get at that very quickly," Vick said. "They are learning from each test."

Vick said commercial imagery of the site in the weeks leading up to the launch showed significant improvements over the 2006 launch. He said ground time for preparations dropped from 20 days to 12, and fueling took only a day compared to three.

But Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, said if the second and third stages did not properly separate, it would call into question the reliability of the system.

"They're still a long ways off" from being able to successfully target and strike the United States, Pinkston said.

North Korea's new west coast launch site is expected to be finished this summer, Vick said, which will allow North Korea to fire a rocket without violating any country's airspace.

President Barack Obama, faced with his first global security crisis, called for an international response and condemned North Korea for threatening the peace and stability of nations "near and far" with what Pyongyang claimed was a satellite launch and its neighbors suspect was a test of long-range missile technology.

"North Korea broke the rules, once again, by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles," Obama said. "This provocation underscores the need for action, not just ... in the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons."

State Department spokesman Robert Wood acknowledged that there were "differing views in terms of how you go forward" in the Security Council but maintained that the administration was working "feverishly" to come up with a "strong, coordinated and effective response to the North Korean missile launch."

Wood denied that the lack of an immediate response was a sign of weakness, noting that the diplomacy was complex and would take time.

Kim Tae-woo, an analyst at Seoul's state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said the launch would also raise the stakes at stalled disarmament talks on the Korean peninsula because Pyongyang now has more to bargain away.

"Militarily and politically, it's not a failure" because "North Korea demonstrated a greatly enhanced range," Kim said. "North Korea is playing a game of trying to manipulate the U.S. by getting it within range, which is the so-called pressure card."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that North Korea could spark a regional arms race that would make it less safe.

"Both North Korea and Iran ought to consider as they go forward with their missile and nuclear programs ... whether those programs actually in the long run enhance their security or detract from it," Gates told a Pentagon press conference Monday.