North Korea warns Japan after launch of spy satellites

Japan's first spy satellites were blasted into orbit yesterday, causing North Korea to warn that the move could spark a regional arms race.

The two satellites, the first of at least four in Japan's £1.3bn spy programme, will allow Tokyo to watch its Communist neighbour's development of long-range missiles and suspected nuclear weapons.

Tanegashima Space Centre is a sprawling complex of launch pads on a rugged island about 700 miles south-west of Tokyo. Until yesterday, Japan's space programme had previously been limited to strictly non-military missions.

Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister, said in Tokyo: "I have high expectations that the satellites can help boost our country's own information-gathering capability."

The satellites, which have conventional photographic and radar-imaging capabilities, are expected to last five years. If all goes well, they will orbit Earth at 250 to 370 miles and supply images regardless of the weather. Officials say the satellites are not intended to provoke North Korea, and will be used for other missions, such as monitoring crop conditions, weather or natural disasters.

But a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry was reported by the official Korea Central News Agency as saying: "Japan will be held wholly responsible for sparking a new arms race in north-east Asia."

North Korea has warned that Japan's plans to launch satellites were a hostile activity and a grave threat. But Mr Koizumi said his government had no intention of acquiring the military capability to launch pre-emptive attacks against another nation.

Officials acknowledge the programme was prompted in 1998 when a North Korean Taepodong ballistic missile flew over Japan's main island and crashed into the Pacific off Alaska. A North Korean government spokesman, quoted in the North's official media last week, hinted that if Tokyo went ahead with the launch Pyongyang might test-fire a long-range missile.

Akihiro Kobe, a Japanese Defence Agency spokesman, said: "We have no specific information indicating North Korea is pushing ahead with preparations for missile tests in response to Japan's satellite launch." A lack of clear data on what Japan's enigmatic Communist neighbour is doing is one reason Tokyo wants its own eyes in orbit.

Japan gets its intelligence primarily from the United States, which has spy satellites and frequent surveillance flights from an air base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Heightening tensions over the North's suspected development of nuclear weapons and its increasingly hostile stance toward Washington have caused deep concern in Japan, almost all of which is within range of Taepodong missiles.

To discourage brinkmanship, the US, with 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, has deployed an aircraft carrier off the Korean Peninsula and bombers to the Pacific island of Guam. Tokyo also sent an Aegis-equipped destroyer to the Japan Sea, which lies between Japan and North Korea.

With Washington's attention focused on Iraq, Pyongyang has shown little interest in easing regional fears. North Korea recently launched a short-range missile on the eve of the inauguration of South Korea's President and increased tensions by sending its fighters to intercept a Japan-based US spy flight in international airspace. Washington has restarted the flights. (AP)