Lee calls for bipartisan support in addressing N. Korean rocket

By Byun Duk-kun

SEOUL, April 6 (Yonhap) -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak sought to win unconditional support from the country's ruling and opposition parties Monday for a government move to punish North Korea for launching a rocket a day earlier in the face of international warnings.

The president's call for bipartisan support came in a special meeting with
leaders of the ruling Grand National Party, the main opposition Democratic Party
(DP) and the minority opposition Party for Advanced Korea.
"Everyone at the G-20 (summit) was concerned. Even China and Russia said everyone
must discourage North Korea from firing the rocket," the president said at the
meeting, referring to the gathering of the world's 20 major economies in London
last week.
North Korea launched a long-range rocket Sunday it claims has successfully put a
communications satellite into orbit as part of its space development program.
Seoul believes the launch was a failure based on U.S. intelligence reports that
the payload, along with the second and third stages of the rocket, fell into the
Pacific Ocean.
Still, South Korea, Japan and the United States are moving to impose new U.N.
sanctions on the communist nation as they have long maintained that any rocket
launch would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions, even if for a space
program.
At the meeting, the president asked the political parties to present a unified
voice on North Korean issues.
Seoul has yet to announce its own retaliatory steps against the North, but
observers here believe the country could further reduce its economic or
humanitarian assistance to the communist nation.
Such a move would require the full and unconditional support of the DP and other
liberal opposition parties, which are often sympathetic to the impoverished
North, they noted.
The president told the political leaders that the government was now considering
joining the U.S.-led non-proliferation regime, the Proliferation Security
Initiative (PSI), but his spokesman later said the move is not in any way linked
to the North Korean rocket launch.
"The issue of joining the PSI has been and will be reviewed regardless of the
North Korean rocket launch as a way to increase our contribution to international
efforts to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and fight
terrorism," Lee Dong-kwan, the spokesman, told reporters.
Pyongyang is prohibited from any missile-related activities under U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1718, adopted shortly after North Korea's missile and nuclear
tests in 2006.
Lee, however, noted the difficulties anticipated in convincing the U.N. council
to issue a united stance on the rocket issue, saying, "We cannot do as we
please."
Russia and China, the North's closest ally, are expected to exercise their veto
power at the U.N. Security Council if any country seeks a new resolution to
impose additional sanctions on North Korea.
The Security Council met on Monday to discuss the North Korean rocket launch, but
no specific agreement was reached.