Russia may back new sanctions on North Korea

MOSCOW/SEOUL (Reuters) - Russia has suggested that it may back economic sanctions against North Korea to persuade Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear arms program, while fears grew that the North is about to test another long-range missile.

Diplomats in New York have been in closed-door negotiations for more than a week on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would broaden sanctions imposed on North Korea after its first nuclear test in October 2006.

Traditionally, Russia and China have been reluctant to back sanctions. But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev indicated on Wednesday that was he was prepared to support U.S-led efforts to draft a sanctions resolution against Pyongyang that the 15-nation Security Council could approve by next week.

"We support those proposals which have been made -- to accept a new, rather serious resolution that condemns what has happened, and to think of introducing certain mechanisms to deter those programs which are being carried out, including by influencing economic processes," he told U.S. television station CNBC, according to a text provided by the Kremlin.

"We have always had quite good relations with the Korean leadership but what has happened arouses very big concern," Medvedev said in the interview.

"A widening of the nuclear club... is absolutely unacceptable," he added.

Russia shares a small border with North Korea in the Far East and its main Pacific port of Vladivostok -- with a population of 600,000 people -- lies only 95 miles from the North Korean border.

The hermit state's nuclear test last week, putting it closer to having a working atomic weapon, has already prompted U.S. and South Korean forces to raise their military alert for the divided peninsula.

North Korea, which began ratcheting up regional tensions when it fired a long-ranged rocket over Japan in April, also test-fired a barrage of short-range missiles last week and threatened to attack the South.

A South Korean newspaper reported that Pyongyang was preparing another long-range missile launch.

"The ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) is covered up so it's tough to be absolutely clear but it looks similar to the Taepodong-2 fired in April but longer," the JoongAng Ilbo quoted a South Korean government source as saying.

The April launch of a rocket that flew more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles) but short of the 4,800 km needed to strike Alaska triggered tightened U.N. Security Council sanctions that Pyongyang called unacceptable, threatening to launch an ICBM unless the world body apologized.

The newspaper said the missile has been moved to a hangar for assembly at the North's newly built west coast Tongchang-ri missile range for a launch that could come as early as mid-June.

The launch area is about 90 km (55 miles) west of Yongbyon, the North's main nuclear complex. However, weapons experts say the impoverished state does not yet have the technology to turn its nuclear material into a warhead to put onto a missile.

"Now is the time for North Korea, rather than continuing to take more dangerous and provocative actions, to recognize that the better course is to re-engage and to get back on the path of negotiations toward denuclearization," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said after meeting South Korean Foreign Ministry officials in Seoul.

NEGOTIATIONS IN NEW YORK

Diplomats from the five permanent Security Council members, Japan and non-council member South Korea met on Thursday to discuss ways of punishing North Korea by restricting its financial ties with the outside world.

Western diplomats said they expect that draft outlines for a resolution call for adding new firms to a U.N. blacklist of entities aiding the North's atomic and missile programs.

Diplomats said that one of the most sensitive issues facing the 15-nation council will be inspection of cargo going in and out of North Korea. Russia and China are reluctant to insist on forced inspections of North Korean vessels, even though that is the best way to police compliance with any embargo, they said.

Other measures included in different draft outlines of the resolution, they said, are an expanded arms embargo.

Adding to the tensions with the United States, North Korea plans to put on trial on Thursday two U.S. journalists it says illegally entered its country with "hostile intent"

Experts said a guilty verdict is certain and that the two, captured on North Korea's border with China in March, are likely to become bargaining chips in high-stake negotiations with the United States.

The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV, will be tried at one of the North's highest courts.

South Korean financial markets appeared to take comfort from a growing view that the provocative behavior was aimed at resolving domestic issues rather than signaling impending military action.

The main Seoul stock index has increased about 9 percent since the April rocket launch. Foreign investors have been net buyers of stocks for 14 days in a row, the longest buying streak in four years.

The growing military tension has come amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, whose country's economy has only grown weaker under his "military first" rule, is moving to anoint his youngest son as heir to the family dynasty.

Experts said North Korea, thought before the May test to have enough plutonium for six to eight nuclear bombs, would need extensive additional testing to develop a working nuclear device it could mount on a warhead.

The Pentagon says its own tests show it is now better able to shoot down any long-range missiles from North Korea.

(Additional reporting by Park Jung-youn, and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Louis Charbonneau and Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Cynthia Osterman)