Word: launching
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...truth is, Kim Jong Il and the regime he heads can live without subjecting North Koreans to revolutionary ditties from space. Yesterday's launch, from the North's standpoint, was an almost unequivocal success, even if the satellite now sleeps with the fishes. Diplomatic and intelligence sources in Seoul and Tokyo contend that Pyongyang's biggest aim was to increase the range of its Taepodong II rocket. In 1998 it launched a predecessor that traveled about 1,060 miles (1,700 km). On July 4, 2006, another long-range rocket broke apart shortly after launch. Yesterday's rocket flew more...
...meantime, the U.N. Security Council - at the behest of the U.S. and its key allies in East Asia, Japan and South Korea - convened yesterday to consider a response to the launch. But the meeting broke up late Sunday night with no agreement on anything, and that speaks volumes about the gap that now exists between China and Russia on one side (both permanent members of the Security Council) and the U.S., South Korea and Japan on the other. (Those nations, plus North Korea, comprise the six-party talks.) (Read about what North Korea could look like after...
...China's reaction to the launch was almost nonchalant, as if its diplomats couldn't be roused to work on a pleasant spring Sunday. In effect, Beijing said, Let's move along, folks - nothing to see here. The Foreign Ministry, in fact, issued a statement calling on other nations not to do or say anything that would upset international "peace and stability" - as if Pyongyang's launch had not already done...
...Washington stood shoulder to shoulder with its allies and declared that the rocket launch was a direct violation of U.N. resolutions 1718 and 1695, which applied sanctions against Pyongyang in the wake of its 2006 missile and nuclear tests and whose language is unequivocal in its opposition to further ballistic-missile tests. But news accounts say that some Security Council members are not convinced the Sunday launch violated the resolutions, presumably because the payload was a satellite, not a weapon. That's the position in both Beijing and Moscow, diplomatic sources tell TIME. Indeed, after the talks...
...away from Japan and South Korea. The test presents a delicate challenge for President Obama: find a way to keep the U.S. and its allies on the same page as far as how to handle Pyongyang. Both Seoul and, to a greater degree, Tokyo are furious at the launch, which comes at a point when relations with North Korea are close to rock bottom for both. South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has junked his predecessor's "sunshine" policy, which showered economic benefits on Pyongyang with few strings attached. That has elicited hostile rhetoric from the North...