I'm so glad we took care Iraq.

[Cory W]

I sleep better at night knowing Kim Jong 2 has missles that can reach the Hollywood Bowl.
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Officials say U.S. missile interceptors could be used in response


Wednesday, June 21, 2006; Posted: 12:19 p.m. EDT (16:19 GMT)

President Bush, speaking in Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday, says North Korea should not test a ballistic missile.




VIENNA, Austria (CNN) -- President Bush urged North Korea on Wednesday not to test a ballistic missile, saying such a move makes other nations nervous.

But Bush rejected any direct negotiations with Pyongyang over the issue, saying all negotiation should come through multiparty talks.

"It should make people nervous when nontransparent regimes who have announced they have nuclear warheads fire missiles," Bush said. "And so we've been working with our partners ... to say to the North Koreans that, 'This is not the way you conduct business in the world. This is not the way that peaceful nations conduct their affairs.' "

U.S. and South Korean officials say North Korea appears to be preparing a test of the Taepodong-2, a ballistic long-range missile that could reach parts of the United States.

Bush said North Korea should live up to a 1999 moratorium on missile testing.

"The North Koreans have made agreements with us in the past, and we expect them to keep their agreements," the U.S. president said.

Thomas Schieffer, U.S. ambassador to Japan, said Wednesday that Washington believes "steps have been taken for a real test" and all options are available for an American response.

"We have greater technical measures of tracking than in the past, and we have options that we have not had in the past, and all these options are on the table," Schieffer said Wednesday, responding to reporters' questions about how the United States would react to such a test.

Officials said the Pentagon could try to use its missile defense system to shoot down the North Korean missile. The military has nine interceptor missiles based in Alaska and two in California. (Watch how the Pentagon could respond to a North Korean missile launch -- 2:02)

While Pentagon officials doubt a military response will be necessary, U.S. diplomatic officials were giving no ground on the issue, rejecting a North Korean offer for direct talks.

"We know the United States is concerned about the test-firing of missiles," Han Suk-Ryul, North Korea's deputy chief of mission at the United Nations, told the Yonhap news agency. "If that is the case, then our position is that we should resolve the problem through negotiations."

Washington repeatedly has refused to hold direct talks with North Korea, saying any discussions should involve the nation's neighbors.

John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Wednesday North Korea would not be rewarded for making threats, The Associated Press reported.

"You don't normally engage in conversations by threatening to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles," AP quoted Bolton as saying. "And it's not a way to produce a conversation because if you acquiesce in aberrant behavior you simply encourage the repetition of it, which we're obviously not going to do."

Six-party talks aimed at curbing Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States, have stalled.

Some U.S. officials have said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may be using the missile test threat to gain diplomatic leverage amid efforts to restart the talks.

The isolated communist state had sometimes engaged in surprise behavior to attract international attention when it felt it was being ignored, and it might feel slighted over Washington's current focus on resolving the nuclear issue with Iran, they said.

Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told Associated Press reporters traveling with the president on Air Force One to Europe that "they seem to moving forward toward a launch, but the intelligence is not conclusive at this point."

Cloud cover since the long-range missile was deployed at the North Korean launching pad has prevented commercial photos, but U.S. spy satellites with radar and other capabilities to see through bad weather seem to show a missile ready for launch.

Meanwhile, former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's planned trip next week to North Korea has been postponed, in part because of the possible missile test by Pyongyang, an aide organizing the trip said Wednesday. (Full story)

Kim's former unification minister, Jeong Se-hyun, said the trip was being delayed because of what he described as unexpected circumstances. He said one of the hindrances was the possibility that North Korea might test a long-range missile.

During the trip, Kim was scheduled to meet the North Korean leader.

South Korea's current unification minister, Lee Jong-seok, said humanitarian aid Seoul supplies to the North, such as rice and fertilizer, could be affected if a missile is tested, according to the AP.

Japan, South Korea, the United States and Australia have united in saying that any test-launching would result in serious consequences, seeing such a move as a provocation.

The official KCNA news agency said in a statement Saturday that alleged sightings of U.S. military surveillance aircraft over the country were creating "an imminent danger of military clash in the sky above those waters."

A test of a Taepodong-2 missile would be North Korea's first long-range missile test since 1998, when Pyongyang surprised the world and sparked an international crisis by firing an intermediate-range missile over Japan.

North Korea has observed a self-declared moratorium on long-range missile testing since 1999, and a 2005 pledge that calls on it and its neighbors, as well as the United States, to maintain peace and security in northeast Asia.

But North Korea has said that the moratorium stands only when the country is in dialogue with the United States.

"Some say our missile test launch is a violation of the moratorium, but this is not true," said Han Suk-Ryul, the North Korean representative at the United Nations, in a phone interview with Yonhap.

CNN's David Ensor, Sohn Jie-Ae, Atika Shubert and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.