Initial reports suggested the communist nation had launched six missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, late Tuesday despite a moratorium on missile tests, though Russia's Chief of the General Staff Yury Baluyevsky said Wednesday that there may have been 10 launches.
But Vladimir Dvorkin, a leading scientist with the center of international security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the launches did not mean that North Korea had a delivery vehicle capable of launching the nuclear weapons it claimed it had developed in 2005.
"Two or three dozen launches have to be made to speak about the development of a functional system as Taepodong-1 or Taepodong-2," he said. "Without this, you cannot talk about the existence of a launch vehicle, and the experience of leading global powers with missile technologies bears this out."
"As a rule, half of the first 10 launches end in failure," he said. "A developed system of trajectory calculations similar to the ones in Russia and the United States is essential for effective design changes after failures, but North Korea is unlikely to have one."
Dvorkin suggested that Tuesday's launches were a provocation to reinvigorate six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program.
Russia, China, Japan, the United States and South Korea have been involved in negotiations with the secretive nation led by Kim Jong-il since 2003. In 2005, North Korea announced it had developed a nuclear capability.
"North Korea's authorities are trying to secure economic assistance and guarantees for maintaining the current regime," Dvorkin said.
At the last round of six-nation talks in September 2005, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees, but later refused to rejoin the talks until Washington lifted financial sanctions imposed over its alleged involvement in counterfeiting and other illegal activities.
