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South Korea
says DPRK Launches missile
The
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)
launched a missile into the sea between the
Korean Peninsula and Japan on Monday, South
Korea's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
However, a
defense ministry official said they have no
further information about the type of the
missile and launching location.
"The only
information we have is that a missile was
fired from an unknown location in North Korea
into the East Sea (Sea of Japan)," the
official said.
"We are
trying to determine whether it was designed to
test a new missile or just part of an exercise
by North Korea troops," he said.
South Korean
authorities were investigating whether the
land-to-sea missile is a test of a new
missile. The reported missile launch took
place as Roh Moo-hyun will be sworn in as
South Korea's president on Tuesday.
UN weapons
inspectors meet to discuss Iraq's outstanding
questions
United
Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on
Monday submitted to his College of
Commissioners, an advisory body a list of more
than 30 outstanding questions about Iraq's
programs of weapons of mass destruction.
In closed-door
consultations, Blix, executive chairman of the
UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission (UNMOVIC) discussed the quarterly
report to be submitted to the Security Council
in early March and briefed his 16
commissioners on the UNMOVIC's assessment of
remaining key tasks of Iraq's
disarmament.
A source close
to the meeting who declined to be identified
told reporters that the session dealt with
questions in four major categories, namely,
questions Baghdad has to clarify concerning
the destruction of missiles and ammunition,
delivery means, and questions concerning
chemical and biological weapons.
These were
selected from hundreds of questions left over
from inspections process during the past
years, the source said. He added that these
questions were caused by Iraq's failure to
verify its weapon and ammunition consumption,
and to provide evidence that it has destroyed
banned weapons and a discrepancy between
Iraq's declared imported arms and its arsenal
inventory.
The
commissioners will meet again on Tuesday to
focus their discussion on the list of
outstanding questions, which is expected to
form part of the latest quarterly report by
the UNMOVIC.
France, Germany
and Russia on Monday circulated a memorandum
among council members, asking the UN chief
weapons inspectors to submit a program of work
to the Security Council by Feb. 28, which
includes the key disarmament tasks.
Identifying outstanding questions constitutes
the groundwork for drawing that program of
work, said the source.
He noted that
there would be some technical difficulties to
submit the program of work as required by the
memorandum, since Blix has all along followed
the timetable of Security Council Resolution
1284, which requires the submission of the
report by the end of March.
Esso closes
UK headquarters following Greenpeace anti-war
protest
Global
oil giant Esso closed its British headquarters
Monday following a nationwide Greenpeace
protest against its American parent company
Exxon Mobil with accusation of
"fuelling" the war in Iraq.
Police arrested
about a dozen of protesters after they
blockaded Esso's headquarters in Leatherhead,
Surrey in southern England, according to the
local reports reaching here. Around 300
protesters from all over Britain took part in
the demonstration. They blocked Esso's only
road entrance by parking a truck across an
access point, padlocked pumps and turned off
the oil supply at some petrol stations, said
the witnesses.
Up to 1,000
staff at the Esso British headquarters went
back home following the blockade, said an Esso
spokesman, while admitting that by 0900 GMT,
protesters marched to at least 50 of its 1,300
petrol stations across the country.
"The
action comes in response to Esso's ongoing
campaign to keep the US hooked on oil,
fuelling war and causing global warming,"
a Greenpeace spokesman said. The protest would
carry on across Britain "until everyone
was arrested," he claimed. However, Esso
spokesman David Eglinton said protesters
"have every right to express their views
but it is ludicrous to suggest that Exxon
Mobil is in any way encouraging a potential
war in Iraq."
"The Iraq
situation is entirely a matter for
governments, not companies to resolve,"
he said.
On the same
day, 13 detained anti-war protesters who broke
into an American air base in southwestern
England were set free, ten on police bail and
one without charge.
European
Union remains divided over Iraq
As the
United States and Britain are ready to
introduce a new resolution to win backing for
a Iraq war, European Union (EU) nations were
still divided on how to press Iraq for
disarmament as EU foreign ministers met in
Brussels on Monday.
British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw, who attended the EU
meeting, said the US and Britain are producing
a new UN resolution early this week and it
needs about two weeks for the United Nations
to make a decision on Iraq disarmament before
a possible military action.
At the same
time, French Foreign Minister Dominique de
Villepin said France opposed a new UN
resolution for the moment. Instead, he said,
Paris would try to boost the effectiveness of
UN weapons inspections with its own memorandum
to the United Nations Security Council
suggesting benchmarks for disarmament which
Baghdad must meet.
But Straw
rejected the French idea, saying "you
don't need to treat him (Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein) like a child, he is not a
child. He does not need to be provided with a
list of things he knows he's got to do in any
event."
However, the EU
ministers seemed united in demanding that Iraq
obey chief weapons inspector Hans Blix's March
1 deadline to start destroying its al-Samoud 2
missiles, ruled by UN experts to have a longer
than permitted range.
"What they
have discovered has to be destroyed and Iraq
has to respect this," said Belgian
Foreign Minister Louis Michel.
Asked how
longer weapons inspections could continue,
Michel said, "We have to trust Hans Blix
and his inspectors and so give them time to
make controls."
"We still
have time to decide this. At the moment, the
job of the inspectors is not over," he
said.
After weeks of
disarray with rival pro-American and anti-war
statements and open letters, EU leaders
temporarily patched up their differences last
Monday with a statement telling Iraq it had a
final chance to avoid a war. Although EU
leaders agreed that inspections could not go
on indefinitely and accepted that war was a
last resort, they continue to differ on how
longer Baghdad should be given and what
constitutes Iraqi cooperation.
EU foreign
policy chief Javier Solana told reporters
during Monday's EU foreign ministers' meeting
"I have to say unfortunately, because
this is one of the very important issues that
deals with war and peace, we should have been
able to get to a common position and we
haven't."
"I have to
say very frankly that we have failed for the
moment," he added.
Greek Foreign
Minister George Papandreou said he, Solana and
EU External Relations Commissioner Chris
Patten would visit Washington on Thursday for
talks on Iraq and Middle East peace efforts
with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Greece currently holds EU's six-month rotating
presidency.
But Papandreou
acknowledged that their Washington trip would
not show a joint European position on a
possible US military action against Iraq.
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