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International Herald TribuneSEOUL: North Korea announced on Tuesday that it was preparing to shoot a satellite into orbit, in a launching that U.S. and South Korean officials have said would be a provocative test of the North's longest-range missile.
The North's announcement came days after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of the United States and Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan of South Korea urged it not to carry out the threatened launching, saying that the move would be "very unhelpful."
During her visit to Seoul last week, Clinton characterized the North Korean government's rule as "tyranny" but offered to normalize relations and provide economic assistance if Pyongyang abandoned its nuclear weapons program. Officials in the region were eagerly awaiting the North Korean response when the announcement came on Tuesday.
"The preparations for launching experimental communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 by means of delivery rocket Unha-2 are now making brisk headway," North Korea's Committee of Space Technology said in a statement carried by the state-run news agency, KCNA. It was the first official confirmation by North Korea of its activities at a missile-launching base at Musudan-ri, on its east coast.
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