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South Korea will fully join the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative as soon as North Korea launches a long-range rocket. "The government will inform the United States of its formal participation in the PSI the moment North Korea fires a rocket," a government official said Wednesday. "The policy has been agreed in a series of recent meetings among related ministries."
The PSI, which aims to block proliferation of so-called weapons of mass destruction and missile technology, is a loose initiative rather than a treaty and does not require formal admission procedures. A country becomes a formal participant once it sends an official document to the U.S. agreeing to the principles.
"The government has held off joining the PSI because of some quarters' fear that it would hurt inter-Korean relations," said another government official. "But it has decided to take part fully in the initiative to respond to North Korean's rocket launch and also because it's important for this country to join in the international community's efforts to block the proliferation of WMD."
The PSI, launched in 2003 under American leadership, calls for ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction to be stopped and searched in territorial waters of participating countries, exchange of information and collaboration in searches. Some 94 countries including the G8 and the 24 EU member nations are taking part.
At the request of the U.S. in 2005, South Korea agreed to only five of the eight PSI provisions for an observer, including dispatching delegations to trainings in and outside participants' territorial waters and listening to briefings. Seoul has not provided physical support to interception training.
Meanwhile, North Korea's official Rodong Shinmun daily on Wednesday slammed the plan. In a commentary titled "Dangerous Tightrope War Game" on Wednesday, the paper said, "South Korea's full participation in the PSI constitutes a political and military challenge, a naked act of destroying peace." A government official dismissed the claim as "unreasonable," saying South Korea cannot search North Korean ships in the open sea even if it takes part in the PSI.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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