North Korea officially announced Wednesday that it had conducted test launches of ballistic missiles and claimed it was the country's sovereign right. The communist nation launched the missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, despite a moratorium on missile tests.
"Since the global public's attention has been focused on Iran and a package of incentives to encourage Tehran to halt its nuclear programs, North Korea became worried as everyone seemed to have forgotten about it," said Alexei Arbatov, head of the International Security Center in Moscow.
He said North Korea was a party to six-nation talks and had already announced both that it was pulling out of the Nonproliferation Treaty and that it had nuclear weapons.
"Pyongyang hoped to use that as bargaining chips in horse-trading over major economic and political concessions from the other five countries, and now all of a sudden it has fallen off the radar screen," he said.
At the last round of six-nation talks in September 2005, which involved the U.S., North Korea, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan, the secretive regime agreed to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees, but later refused to rejoin the talks until Washington lifted financial sanctions imposed over its alleged involvement in counterfeiting and other illegal activities.
Arbatov said the problem was not purely political but also had a military dimension, showing how dangerous the development of nuclear missile technology was, especially in such countries as North Korea.
"Test launches in which some system or other fails and brings down a missile or elements thereof on populated centers can hurt hundreds of people. Meanwhile, an unsuccessful launch of a nuclear-tipped missile can claim hundreds of thousands of lives," he said, adding that Russia should draw serious conclusions from the latest tests.
"North Korea's programs can jeopardize Russia's security. Our involvement in the six-nation talks is not simply a way of avoiding a war on the Korean peninsula and expanding our influence in the region, but also a way of protecting our national security," he said.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has urged the communist regime to continue observing the missile launch moratorium and said it would consult with other participants of six-party talks on the issue.
The UN Security Council said it would hold an emergency meeting later on Wednesday to discuss the developments of the situation on the Korean peninsula.
