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SEOUL: North Korea is pushing ahead with preparations to fire a missile but a launch is not imminent, South Korea's pointman on the communist state said Wednesday.
"I don't believe a missile launch is quite imminent but there are preparations ongoing," Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek told reporters, without indicating any timeframe.
The communist state has said it will fire a rocket to put a satellite into orbit, in what Seoul and Washington see as a pretext to test a missile that could theoretically reach Alaska.
They say any launch would breach a UN resolution adopted after the last missile test in 2006.
The new US envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is touring China, Japan and South Korea this week. He will discuss ways to dissuade the North from a launch and try to persuade it to resume stalled nuclear disarmament talks.
Inter-Korean tensions are also high, after the North on January 30 announced it is scrapping all peace accords with Seoul -- including one that recognised the western sea border as an interim frontier.
Seoul has warned of possible naval clashes along the Yellow Sea border known as the Northern Limit Line.
"I consider the situation in the West (Yellow) Sea and around the NLL as very serious," Hyun said. "But we are responding very closely and resolutely."
The North is angry at South Korea's conservative leader Lee Myung-Bak, who scrapped his predecessors' policy of offering virtually unconditional aid to Pyongyang.
The minister again offered the North dialogue "anytime, anywhere" but told it to stop heaping insults on Lee. He said Seoul would "actively consider" providing any humanitarian aid that the North requires.
- AFP
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