By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said Thursday it had given global agencies official notice of its plans to launch a satellite, with a report indicating it could occur in early April, in a move seen by Washington as a disguised missile test.
The United States said Wednesday it could pursue a range of options against the reclusive state if it launches the long-range ballistic missile, including squeezing it harder with U.N. sanctions imposed after separate missile and nuclear tests in 2006.
The latest move adds to mounting tension on the divided Korean peninsula with North Korea saying it was on the edge of war, though many analysts doubt Pyongyang would dare send its poorly equipped military into a direct attack on the South.
North Korea said it has acceded to an international treaty on space exploration "as part of its preparations for launching Kwangmyongsong-2, an experimental communications satellite," its KCNA news agency reported. Outside the North it is called Taepodong-2.
Its official media has also described itself as the victim of planned aggression by South Korea and its U.S. ally.
An article in the North's Rodong Sinmun daily accused South Korea and the United States of using this week's joint military exercises as "madcap and reckless sabre rattling ... in a bid to make surprise pre-emptive strikes at the DPRK (North Korea)."
The U.S. Navy showed off to media its Aegis-class destroyer USS Chaffee, which is in South Korea for the drills and equipped to intercept missiles. Media reported last week that Japan and the United States might try to intercept any ballistic missile launched by the North.
The North says it would consider shooting down its rocket an act of war and has told South Korean commercial planes to keep away from its air space.
Adding to Pyongyang's fury, the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier group is sailing off the south coast as part of the military exercises with the South, where the United States permanently stations about 28,000 troops.
FACE AT STAKE
Lending a degree of credibility to the North's rocket launch plans, Pyongyang said it had told agencies, including the International Civil Aviation Organisation, of its plans so they can inform aircraft.
The South's Yonhap news agency quoted sources as saying North Korea had told the agencies the launch would be between April 4-8.
Analysts said there were few technical differences between a satellite launch and a test of its longest-range ballistic missile, which use the same rocket.
"The missile launch requires additional technology because the missile needs to be able to re-enter the atmosphere," said a defence analyst in Seoul who asked not to be named because of the sensitive subject matter.
North Korea shocked the region when it fired a Taepodong-1 over Japan in 1998.
The later Taepodong-2, whose first and only test flight in 2006 failed, is designed to carry a weapon as far as Alaska.
Experts said a launch looks inevitable, partly because the government wants to flaunt a high-tech success at home and also display its prowess to the international community from which it is almost completely isolated.
"They are putting themselves in a position where they have to keep going if they do not want to lose face. They are forcing their own hand," said Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum CSIS think tank.
But analysts said the North faces little risk of new punishments that could seriously damage its hardline leadership as it was likely China, about its only major ally, and Russia would use their Security Council veto power to block extra sanctions.
A ballistic missile launch would violate a U.N. Security Council resolution that forbids Pyongyang from further nuclear tests or ballistic missile launches.
South Korean officials said the North has been assembling the Taepodong-2 at a missile base on its east coast. The missile is still indoors but once set vertically and moved to a launch pad, it can be fired off in about seven to 10 days, experts have said.
(Additional reporting by Kim Junghyun and Jack Kim; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Jeremy Laurence)
