North Korea rocket launch could be Saturday

LONDON (Reuters) - North Korea is almost certain to launch its long-range rocket, possibly as early as Saturday if weather allows, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said on Friday, promising a "strong and stern response."

"I think it's almost certain North Korea will fire the missile," he told a small group of reporters in London where he had attended the G20 summit.

He also said the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, widely thought to have suffered a stroke last year, appeared to be improving and that he had a continued hold on power.

"We favor sending out a very strong and stern message to the North Koreans that the international community does not condone nor will it accept North Korea engaging in such actions."

But Lee offered no substantial measures to respond to the missile launch scheduled for between April 4-8, which many consider will be to test a long-range ballistic missile that could carry a warhead as far as the United States and which would contravene U.N. resolutions.

North Korea says it is sending a communications satellite into space for peaceful purposes.

"We don't have anything in place to respond (to a launch)," Lee said, adding the issue would go to the U.N. Security Council.

Both Russia and China, the latter the nearest the reclusive North has to a major ally, have made clear they would block new sanctions by the Council, where they have veto power.

There have been some calls to tighten existing sanctions imposed in 2006 in the wake of the North's first nuclear test.

Lee said the launch would only harm Pyongyang in talks with regional powers over its nuclear weapons program.

"While in the short term it might give them an upper hand in the negotiations, in the long term the trust given them by the international community will only lessen and this will not be in their benefit."

South Korea, along with China, Japan, Russia and the United States, has been trying for years to persuade the impoverished North to give up its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal in return for massive aid.

TALKS ON ICE

But the talks have been on ice since last December while relations with Lee's conservative government, which ended years of condition-free aid from the South, have deteriorated sharply.

He warned that efforts like those in the past by the reclusive state to drive a wedge between governments involved in the nuclear talks would not work this time.

"If North Korea test fires a missile, that incident will allow for even closer cooperation among the five (countries)."

U.S. President Barack Obama had made clear in their bilateral meeting in London the previous day, Lee said, that the latest moves by the North would not succeed in forcing Washington into the face-to-face meeting Pyongyang seeks.

The world had come to view this sort of behavior by the North as "normal business," he said, criticizing it for spending so much on weaponry while its economy was so weak.

Lee suggested there might be a link between uncertainty over a successor to the 67-year-old North Korean leader and the planned missile launch, but did not elaborate.

"For any state like North Korea, it (would be) normal procedure for them to have already designated a successor. This should have happened 10 years ago, yet we still do not have any clear signal."

Some analysts have suggested a successful launch could give Kim the confidence in the face of possible opposition from his powerful military to name one of his sons as a successor. Kim was himself designated by his father as heir.

Speculation has grown that ill-health may be sapping Kim's iron grip on power, something Lee dismissed.

"It seems that he does not have a trouble governing North Korea. His state of health seems to have improved."

However, Lee said that North Koreans, as they become increasingly aware of what is happening in the outside world, no longer so easily accept their government's propaganda.

"The North Korean leadership must be mindful of changes taking place in North Korean society."

(Editing by Jerry Norton)