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US North Korea missile test
is 'routine'
AFP
Friday May 25, 2007
The
White House on Friday played down North Korea's first missile tests
in almost a year, calling them a "routine exercise" amid
a continuing logjam in implementing a nuclear disarmament deal.
"It appears to be a routine exercise," said US national
security council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
The State Department also said the tests would not affect ongoing
international talks aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear program.
"As far as I know, it doesn't have any particular implication
to the six-party talks," said State Department spokesman Tom
Casey.
Pyongyang agreed at the talks in February, involving China, Japan,
Russia, the two Koreas and the United States, to scrap its nuclear
programs, with the shutdown of its Yongbyon reactor to be the first
step.
But it made the shutdown conditional on the settlement of a dispute
over accounts totalling 25 million dollars which have been frozen
at the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia since 2005 under US money-laundering
and counterfeiting sanctions.
US and other negotiators are struggling to settle the row over
the funds which is blocking any start to the North's promised nuclear
disarmament.
"This is a fairly routine test of some short range missiles,"
Casey said of Friday's test.
"That is something that the North Koreans have done before,
so I don't think it is an issue that would appear to affect the
moratorium that the North Koreans imposed on long-range missile
tests some time ago."
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