Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said today that the country is on full alert over North Korea's planned rocket launch, expected at any time over the coming days.
"We want to seek their self-restraint until the last minute," Noda told reporters as he arrived for talks with a special taskforce set up to handle Japan's response to the planned launch.
"But we want to be fully prepared for any possible contingency," Noda said.
Poor but nuclear-armed North Korea has said it plans to launch a satellite between Thursday and Monday to mark the centenary of the birth of late founding president Kim Il-Sung.
Western critics see the launch as a thinly veiled missile test banned by UN Security Council resolutions.
Tokyo has deployed missile defence systems to intercept and destroy the rocket if it looks set to fall on Japan, much as it did in 2009 before Pyongyang's last long-range rocket launch.
On Thursday, Japan's lower house of parliament unanimously adopted a resolution that demanded Pyongyang stop the planned launch.
"(The launch) can never be permissible as it is an act of destroying peace and stability not only in Japan but also in northeast Asia," it ...
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