N. Korea and Russia to cooperate on missiles programs

TOKYO -- Pyongyang and Moscow have called for cooperation in missile programs to combat the United States and Japanese efforts to set up a theater missile defense system.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov discussed missile cooperation with his North Korean counterpart, Paek Nam-Sun, during Ivanov's visit last week to North Korea, the official KCNA news agency said on Saturday.

"The foreign ministers of the two countries expressed deep concern over the U.S. and Japan's efforts to set up a theatre missile defense system," the report quoted Paek as saying. "Both sides shared the view that the moves to escalate tensions are a source of upsetting strategic balance, increasing the danger of war and sparking a new arms race in Northeast Asia and the rest of the world and acknowledged the need for the countries concerned to cope with them with concerted efforts."

North Korea clarified its position that it would "strongly retaliate against any move to discriminate against it in the issue of satellite and missile launch that belongs to the sovereignty of an independent state," Paek said.

His statement followed Ivanov's Japan trip during which the Russian minister said he had not discussed the issue of North Korean missiles in Pyongyang.

Ivanov and Paek last week signed a new friendship pact ending a Cold War alliance under which the now-defunct Soviet Union was to send troops to fight alongside North Korea in any armed conflict.

The new treaty requires Russia and North Korea to simply not back any other state that attacks the other.

Last week, a U.S. expert on international security, William Schneider, Jr., told a Senate subcommittee on international security and proliferation that, within five years, North Korea and Iran, together with Russia and China, would have the ballistic missile capability to inflict major damage on the United States.

"These newer, developing threats in North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are in addition to those still posed by the existing ballistic missile arsenals of Russia and China, nations with which the United States is not now in conflict but which remain in uncertain transition, " Schneider said. "The fewer ballistic missile-equipped nations capabilities will not match those of U.S. systems for accuracy or reliability., However, they would be able to inflict major destruction on the U.S. within about five years of a decision to acquire such a capability. During several of those years, the U.S. might not be aware that such a decision had been made.