Thaindian News

Beijing, March 18 (IANS) With international concern growing over the planned satellite launch by North Korea, Pyongyang has decided to invite foreign observers for the event.

Pyongyang has expressed its readiness to invite experts and journalists from other countries to visit the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, Xinhua reported citing North Korea’s official news agency KCNA.

The Korean Committee for Space Technology would “invite experienced foreign experts on space science and technology and journalists to visit the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, the General Satellite Control and Command Center and other places and observe its launch”, KCNA said.

It also said North Korea has informed the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Maritime Organization and the International Telecommunication Union.

Pyongyang Sunday asserted its legitimate right of launching satellites, saying “double standard is intolerable”.

It said the US, Japan and South Korea, that have criticised the satellite launch as a “missile launch”, were continuing their hostile policy toward North Korea and encroaching upon its sovereignty.

The three countries have dubbed the planned satellite launch as “a serious provocative act threatening peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia”.

The satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 will be launched to mark the 100th birthday of late founding father Kim Il Sung, in April.

The KCNA said peaceful use of space was a “universally recognised legitimate right of a sovereign state”.

The satellite launch for scientific research can “by no means be a monopoly of specified countries”, it said, adding that it was intolerable to use the satellite launch as “a lever for political, military and economic pressure” upon North Korea.

The KCNA said two previously launched experimental satellites — Kwangmyongsong-1 in 1998 and Kwangmyongsong-2 in 2009 — had strictly abided by relevant international regulations.