US
plays a bit part in Pyongyang's
parade By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - Are the United States and Germany
birds of a feather flocking together with China?
A US maker's diesel engine and a German
manufacturer's automatic transmission system may
have been used for a missile launch vehicle seen
in a military parade in Pyongyang on April 15,
raising questions over the efficacy of the
international effort to contain and reverse
Pyongyang's nuclear weapons threat, Asia Times
Online has learned.
Although the US has
raised allegations that China has supplied North
Korea with technology for its missile program, the
US itself would be under fire over having provided
some help for North
Korea's mobile missile
technology, whether indirectly or not.
Military experts around the
world have pointed out the 16-wheeler
transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) vehicle that
transported North Korea's new missile in Pyongyang
on April 15 appeared to very similar to the
WS-51200, manufactured by the 9th Academy of the
China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation
(CASIC), also known as the Hubei Sanjiang Space
Wanshan Special Vehicle Co Ltd. [1] This maker of
special-purpose vehicles produces the WS series of
TELs that are used to deploy the DF-11, DF-16 and
DF-21 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles
made by the CASIC, the large state-owned hi-tech
enterprise under direct control of China's central
government.
"For the US, this is as if a
ladder were taken off suddenly," Narushige
Michishita, an associate professor of security and
international studies at National Graduate
Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, told Asia
Times Online. "Amid international frustration
against China's stance against North Korea, the US
seems to have aimed to take this opportunity to
press hard on Beijing further. But it may now
become difficult."
According to the Hubei
Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle Co's
website, the US diesel engine manufacturer Cummins
Inc, listed on the New York Stock Exchange,
provided its KTTA19-C700 diesel engine for the
WS-51200. Meanwhile, German's ZF Friedrichshafen,
one of the world's leading automotive industry
suppliers specializing in driveline and chassis
technologies, supplied its automatic transmission
called WSK440+16S251 for the WS-51200.
Breach of UNSC resolutions? Providing a TEL to Pyongyang would put the
nation responsible in breach of United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1874, which was
adopted in June 2009 and prohibits supplying North
Korea with "any arms or related materiel, or
providing financial transactions, technical
training, services or assistance related to such
arms".
The TEL would also have been banned
under UNSC Resolution 1718, which was adopted in
October 2006 in the aftermath of the North's first
nuclear test in the same month. Those sanctions
prohibit the import of any "vehicles designed or
modified for the transport, handling, control,
activation and launching" of "complete rocket
systems (including ballistic missile systems,
space launch vehicles and sounding rockets)".
Apparently uninformed about a US diesel
engine maker's indirect involvement in
Chinese-made special-purpose vehicle WS-51200, US
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland on
April 20 told reporters that the US raised the
issue during ongoing talks with the Chinese
government on North Korea.
United States
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also said in US
Congressional testimony on April 19 that he was
"sure there has been some help coming from China.
I don't know the exact extent of that ... but
clearly there has been assistance along those
lines".
Panetta also said the US was
concerned about "the mobile capabilities that were
on display in the parade recently in North Korea.
The bottom line is that if they have a mobile
capability to have ICBMs [inter-continental
ballistic missiles] deployed in that manner then
that increases the threat from North Korea".
The Chinese government has denied its
involvement and sanctions-busting. Foreign
Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a regular news
briefing on April 19 that China was against the
spread of weapons of mass destruction and carriers
for such weapons.
A Chinese company is
suspected of providing components for a mobile
missile platform showcased in a recent parade in
North Korea, Reuters reported on Saturday quoting
a US official. "The [Barack] Obama administration
suspects the Chinese manufacturer sold the chassis
- not the entire vehicle - and may have believed
it was for civilian purposes, which means it would
not be an intentional violation of UN sanctions,"
the news agency said.
The US State
Department said it believed Chinese assurances
that it was adhering to UN sanctions. ''I think we
take them at their word,'' spokesman Mark Toner
told reporters on April 19.
Mystery of
WS-51200 The WS-51200 resembles the
vehicle that carried the North Korea's new
missile, which was unveiled on 15 April at a
parade in Pyongyang marking the centenary of
founder Kim Il-sung's birth.
It has a
gross vehicle mass of 122 tons and it can carry a
load of 80 tons. It measures 20.11 meters long,
3.35 meters wide, 3.35 meters high. The diameter
of the tire is 1.6 meter. The length of that new
missile on the vehicle is about 18 meter, bigger
than North Korea's mobile intermediate-range
ballistic missile (IRBM) Musudan but smaller than
its long-range missile Taepodong-2, which showed
an unabashed failure of the rocket launch on April
13.
Military experts around the world are
now figuring out if this is a new type of IRBM or
a new ICBM or
just a mock for a military parade, not real one.
The CASIC announced in October 2010 that
it had closed a contract to export WS-51200 with a
certain nation, presumably North Korea, and that
the amount of contact with that nation was 30
million yuan (US$4.75 million) including an
advance payment of 12 million yuan. [2]
Then, in May 2011 the CASIC also announced
its subsidiary company successfully finished
developing WS-51200. [3]
The Mainichi
Shimbun, a Japanese daily newspaper, on April 16
reported from Beijing that by citing intelligence
community, Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special
Vehicle CO loaded four WS-51200 vehicles onto a
ship with Cambodian nationality around August
2011. This ship headed for North Korea's Namp'o
port, the newspaper said.
Kosuke Takahashi is a
Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. Besides Asia
Times Online, he also writes for Jane's Defence
Weekly as Tokyo correspondent. His twitter is
@TakahashiKosuke
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