US: 'Provocative' North Korea launches not a threat
The White House denounced a wave of North Korean missile launches as "provocative" but said that the rockets did not appear to pose a threat to the United States.
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"We do consider it provocative behavior," and consider that North Korea violated a missile test moratorium, US national security advisor Stephen Hadley told reporters on a conference call.
Hadley identified the launches as five short or medium-range missiles and one long-range Taepodong 2 that failed roughly a minute after launch, and said US officials were scrambling to assess the rockets' capabilities.
But even that particular Taepodong 2, which had widely been reported to be able to reach US soil, did not pose a danger to the United States because "a missile that fails after 40 seconds is not a threat to the United States," he said.
Copyright AFP 2005, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
