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Japan: N. Korea launches 2nd missile in 2 days

TOKYO, Tuesday (Reuters) Japan said on Tuesday it had information that North Korea had launched a short-range missile, the second in two days, as U.S. President George W. Bush and other Asia-Pacific leaders wrapped up a summit that included talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

A spokesman for Japan's Defence Agency said the surface-to-ship missile, with a probable maximum range of about 100 km (60 miles) appeared to have been launched during the morning from North Korea's east coast.

No further details were available.

Meanwhile South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) denied an unconfirmed report from Japan that North Korea test-fired a second short-range missile towards the Sea of Japan (East Sea) Tuesday.

"As far as we know, there has been no firing of missiles by North Korea today," a spokesman of JCS told AFP.

The North on Monday fired a similar missile between the Korean peninsula and Japan in what Seoul said appeared to be part of military exercises by the isolated communist country.

Tuesday's missile is the fourth such launch this year. In 1998, North Korea shocked the world by firing a Taepodong ballistic missile that flew over Japan's main island of Honshu and landed in the sea off Japan's Pacific coast.

Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have played down previous North Korean launches of short-range ballistic missiles, but the launches are likely to increase international pressure on Pyongyang to exercise restraint as efforts continue to restart talks over its weapons programme.

Bush, in a policy shift to re-energise talks with North Korea, joined his South Korean counterpart President Roh Moo-hyun on Monday in calling for a new round of talks.

A top aide to Bush, however, cautioned that consultations were just beginning and it would take some time to come up with security guarantees to offer North Korea in exchange for it abandoning the programme.

Meanwhile a us official said that despite President Bush's evolving proposal for a security guarantee for North Korea, his administration has no intention of backing off plans to interdict weapons-related shipments by Pyongyang to so-called rogue states.

Neither is there any expectation joint military exercises with U.S. allies South Korea and Japan will be curtailed, he told Reuters.

Those are two reasons Pyongyang may not be comforted enough by the security guarantee proposal to drop its reluctance to attend another round of six-party talks on its nuclear program, U.S. officials and experts said.

In an apparent effort to energize six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis and satisfy allies who say he has dragged his feet on serious engagement, the president discussed a plan for a five-nation security guarantee for Pyongyang during an Asian economic summit in Bangkok on Monday.

U.S. officials in Washington and in Bangkok said the security guarantee was in the formative stages, requiring consultations with Asian partners as well as more discussions within the Bush administration.

"The wording hasn't been decided yet," one official said.

The administration is examining various historical models for security guarantees. "There are different ways a security guarantee could be couched. ... We're at the beginning stages of this," the official said.

North Korea has repeatedly accused the United States of "hostile intent" and insisted it must pursue a nuclear deterrent to protect against an American military attack.

U.S. officials expect Pyongyang to interpret any security guarantee as requiring the suspension of the Proliferation Security Initiative, which Washington organized with 10 other nations to interdict on air, land and sea shipments of materials used in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Asked if a security guarantee would mean suspending the interdiction program or U.S. exercises with Japan and South Korea, the U.S. official said: "They would continue. Absolutely."

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