Rodong deployment in Mideast expected by '04

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Rodong deployment in Mideast expected by '04

Middle Eastern countries will operationally deploy Rodong missiles from North Korea by 2004 or 2005, an Israeli military expert warned Monday.

Reserve Brigadier-General Shlomo Brom, former chief of the Israeli Strategic Planning Division and now a senior research fellow at the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, visited Seoul for the first joint defense workshop between South Korea and Israel. "Iran has already test-launched intermediate-range missiles imported from the North," Mr. Brom said.

The Rodong missile was developed by the North in the late 1980s. It has a range of 1,000 kilometers. Iran imported Rodong missile engines from the North and developed its own intermediate-range Shahab-3 missiles. Rodong missiles aimed at Israel will be deployed by Iran in two to three years, General Brom said.

"Even after the Sept. 11 attacks, Pyeongyang continued to export missiles," he said. "North Korean cargo boats must be inspected on the high seas."

North Korea exported complete missiles, mostly Scuds with a range of 600 to 800 kilometers, in the 1980s; in the 1990s, Pyeongyang shifted its focus to sales of missile components and technology, General Brom explained. The United States recently has identified Pyeongyang as a major source of instability in the world through its missile exports. It reportedly is devising strategies to limit the proliferation of North Korean missiles.

General Brom said negotiations between Israel and North Korea broke off because Pyeongyang demanded unreasonably high compensation in return for giving up missile exports. He believes that pressure from Washington is the best means of persuading the North to end the proliferation of these weapons.

Since the 1980s, North Korea has sold 250 missiles, worth $580 million, to Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Libya.

by Choi Won-ki

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