Fed: Downer makes peace mission to North Korea

AAP General News (Australia)
08-05-2004
Fed: Downer makes peace mission to North Korea

SYDNEY, Aug 5 AAP - Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer will travel to North
Korea on a peace mission to settle nuclear tensions, The Australian newspaper reported
today.

Mr Downer's visit was aimed at further encouraging the volatile country to drop it
aggressive nuclear stance, the paper said.

He will arrive on August 17 with foreign affairs deputy secretary Murray MacLean and
Australia's ambassador to China, Alan Thomas, after talks with the Chinese government
in two weeks.

It will be Mr Downer's first visit to North Korea in four years. A spokesman for
the North Korean embassy in Canberra said "Mr Downer will be most welcome to visit our
country".

"North Korea believes it would be good to develop its bilateral relationship with Australia,"

the spokesman said.

But he declined to give further details of the visit.

The mission comes as a new warning emerged yesterday that the country was secretly
developing new missiles with the range to target the United States.

The authoritative Jane's Defence Weekly reported the country is deploying new land
and sea-based ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and may have sufficient
range to hit the United States.

The article states the two new systems appeared to be based on a decommissioned Soviet
submarine-launched ballistic missile, the R-27.

It said communist North Korea had acquired the know-how during the 1990s from Russian
missile specialists and by buying 12 former Soviet submarines which had been sold for
scrap metal but retained key elements of their missile launch systems.

AAP tam/was

KEYWORD: KOREA AUST

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