SEOUL, April 4 (AFP) - North Korea kept the world guessing about its satellite launch today after the first day of a scheduled five-day period passed without a blast-off.
The United States and its regional allies see the exercise as a disguised ballistic missile test by the nuclear-armed North and vow to report it to the UN Security Council.
Nerves were fraying in Japan, which is under the projected flight path.
A government crisis centre announced at 12:16 pm that the rocket was believed launched, but five minutes later retracted its statement as incorrect.
Regional officials in Akita prefecture, which is expected to see a part of the rocket land off its coast, earlier also mistakenly informed thousands that it had gone ahead.
South Korean security ministers ended an emergency meeting chaired by President Lee Myung-Bak at 4:00 pm, a presidential official told AFP.
“The prediction of a launch today had seemed quite plausible but the weather conditions seemingly were not that good at the launch base,” an unidentified official told Yonhap news agency.
The communist state last month notified world aviation and shipping agencies it would stage the launch sometime between April 4-8 and between 11:00am and 4:00pm (0200-0700 GMT).
Preparations to launch an “experimental communications satellite” have been completed and it will be launched “soon”, the state Korean Central News Agency announced earlier in the day, saying previously stated dates and times were still in effect. |
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