Michael Richardson: Missile deals muscle up North Korea

The missiles now falling on Israel have been supplied to Lebanon's Islamists by Syria and Iran.

But the missile development chain goes back a long way in time and distance, chiefly to North Korea which has co-operated with Iran for years in building and testing the full gamut of ballistic missiles, from short-range to long-range with intercontinental reach.

Major powers, including Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - acknowledged this danger when they voted unanimously last weekend on a resolution condemning North Korea's missile launches and calling on all countries to take action to block the missile trade.

North Korea and Iran will, of course, continue to shun such demands from the international community.

The missile business gives the regime of Kim Jong-il a malign influence and clout in world affairs that it would otherwise not have as the isolated Government of an impoverished country.

This influence is magnified when combined with concern that North Korean scientists and engineers may already be able to fit the nose-cones of their missiles with chemical and biological warheads and may eventually be able to do the same with nuclear weapons when they can make them small enough.

A report released by South Korea's defence ministry in 2003 estimated North Korea had shipped over 400 Scud missiles to the Middle East since the 1980s. The biggest buyers were Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Syria but also included Egypt and Libya.

Until now, Israel has remained immune from heavyweight enemy missiles since it came under attack from a limited number of Iraqi Scuds in the Kuwait war of 1991.

Iran will be watching closely as the US and other concerned states try to curb North Korea's missile industry.

Tehran is Pyongyang's main customer in a missile business estimated to be worth as much as US$1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) a year for the cash-strapped North Korean regime which needs the money to further develop its weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

North Korea has been selling missiles, parts and technical assistance to Iran for more than 20 years. Tehran's latest Shahab series of missiles are North Korean derivatives.

This collaboration took a big step forward late last year when Pyongyang shipped 18 new single stage missiles to Iran that had been fully developed, but never flight tested, in North Korea.

They were based on the SS-N-6, a submarine-launched ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, originally deployed by the Soviet Union. But the missile and warhead design technology fell into North Korean hands some time between 1988 and 1991 when the former superpower disintegrated.

Iran successfully tested the missile, which North Korea calls the Nodong-B, in January.

It may be at least five more years before North Korea and Iran can jointly develop a reasonably reliable Taepodong-2 type missile with intercontinental range.

But the Nodong-B, with a range of up to 4000km , enables North Korea to target US military bases in Japan and on the US island of Guam in the western Pacific.

It allows Iran to cover almost all of Europe as well as Israel. Iran is adding the Nodong-B to its Shahab missile family.

Meanwhile, both Tehran and Pyongyang have helped the Syrian Government improve its ballistic missiles.

The latest US intelligence report to Congress, published last May for the year 2004, says Syria was receiving essential foreign equipment and help to improve its short-range missile production capability primarily from North Korea while developing longer-range missile programmes, such as Scud D and possibly other variants, with assistance from both North Korea and Iran.

After North Korea created a storm by firing a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan into the Pacific in 1998, it announced a halt to all flight testing of long-range missiles the following year evidently hoping to receive benefits and concessions from both the US and Japan.

Meanwhile, it kept design work, engine and component testing, and missile assembly going at home, while doing flight testing in Iran and sharing the information with Tehran. All in secret of course.

Pyongyang declared an end to its self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile launches from North Korea in 2005, claiming bad faith by Washington and Japan.

The current crisis in the Middle East and North Korea's refusal to curb its missile proliferation are a critical test of whether the international community can work together more effectively to prevent, or at least delay, the spread of advanced missile technology.

* Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.