North Korea 'ready to test new high range missile capable of hitting US west coast'
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North Korea is set to test-fire a new "high range" missile capable of hitting the US mainland, a Russian lawmaker claims.
Anton Morozov revealed Pyongyang's plans as he returned from a five-day visit to the hermit state - where the mood is "rather belligerent" - with a Russian delegation.
He claims North Korean officials gave the Russians mathematical calculations showing that the intercontinental ballistic missile could reach targets on the US west coast.
It comes just days after a CIA official revealed that Kim Jong-un's regime could launch a new missile or carry out another nuclear test next week.
(Image: AFP)
Morozov told the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti: "They are preparing for a new test of a longer-range missile.
"They even gave us mathematical calculations that they believe prove that their missile can hit the western coast of the United States."
He described the mood in Pyongyang as "rather belligerent", adding: "In the near future, they are going to carry out, as far as we understand, yet another launch of a missile, but this time with a longer range."
He was part of a Russian delegation which made an official visit to Pyongyang this week to discuss bilateral cooperation with the Russian ambassador to North Korea, the English-language state-run Sputnik news agency reported.
(Image: Barcroft Media)
Morozov, a member of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, has called for a prompt intervention in the situation on the Korean peninsula to avoid a new war.
Earlier this week, Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the CIA's Korea Mission Center, revealed that North Korea's latest provocation could come on Tuesday when it celebrates the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Many past nuclear or missile tests have coincided with mass public celebrations.
A test would coincide with Japan's lower house election campaigns and the Columbus Day holiday in the US. Given the time difference, it would be Monday in the US if a missile or nuclear test occurs in Pyongyang on Tuesday morning.
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(Image: REUTERS)
Despite UN sanctions, North Korea has recently test-fired two missiles over northern Japan, with both crashing into the Pacific Ocean.
A new report by the website 38 North, which monitors Pyongyang's activities, has suggested that a North Korean nuclear attack on Seoul and Tokyo could kill more than two million people and injure nearly eight million others.
North Korea's state-run news agency, KCNA, reported on Friday that the country's National Peace Committee (NPC) has called on the US to pull its troops out of South Korea.
US forces have been stationed in the South since the Korean War.
(Image: AFP)
The committee said the 64-year-old South Korea-US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was an "aggressive and traitorous war document" allowing the US to control the South's army, South Korea's state-run Yonhap News Agency reported.
The NPC said the agreement is a symbol of "US military occupation" and it has "reduced South Korea into advanced base for a nuclear war".
It added that South Koreans cannot evade a nuclear war as long as US troops are based in their country.
The North and South are technically still at war, as the conflict in the 1960s ended with an armistice and no peace treaty has ever been signed.
(Image: REX/Shutterstock)
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Meanwhile, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which is seeking a ban on nuclear arms.
Berit Reiss-Andersen, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said: "We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time.
"Some states are modernising their nuclear arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea."
Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of ICAN, a coalition of grassroots non-government groups, said in response to rising tensions on the Korean peninsula and the war of words between Kim and US President Donald Trump: "Nuclear weapons are illegal. Threatening to use nuclear weapons is illegal.
"Having nuclear weapons, possessing nuclear weapons, developing nuclear weapons, is illegal, and they need to stop."