TOKYO, June 17: The United States and Japan warned North Korea on Saturday to drop plans for a long-range missile test, warning it would be ‘grave and provocative’.

Thomas Schieffer, the US ambassador to Japan, said there were signs the self-declared nuclear power was preparing a missile launch and Japanese media reports said the test could come this weekend.

“This is a grave and provocative action that North Korea is contemplating and we hope they turn back from launching a missile,” Schieffer told reporters after evening talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso.

“If they did that, it would be a very provocative act. The United States and Japan agreed on that,” he said.

“In the event where they will launch, I think all options are on the table and I would consider many different alternatives to dissuade them from doing that in the future,” he said.

Schieffer declined to give a time-frame for a launch of a Taepodong-2 missile, which could one day be able to hit the mainland United States.

“There are indications that North Korea is preparing launching a missile and I don’t want to get into the specific details,” Schieffer said.

North Korean officials, however, have denied plans to test-fire a ballistic missile, according to a South Korean lawmaker quoted by Yonhap news agency.

A group of North Korean officials and civilians returned home after a four-day visit to South Korea Saturday.

“I met a number of North Korean officials who said missile-related concerns in South Korea were groundless,” Yonhap quoted Choi Sung, a ruling party lawmaker as saying.

“They also insisted that the US and Japan had in the past floated lots of groundless rumours concerning North Korea.”

A long-range test would be the first since the communist state shocked the world in 1998 by firing a missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean.

North Korea last year declared it had nuclear weapons but also reached a broad agreement to give up its program in exchange for aid and security guarantees.

But negotiations, which have been conducted among six nations including the United States and Japan, broke down in November, with North Korea refusing to return to the table unless the United States drops financial sanctions imposed over alleged counterfeiting and money-laundering.

“The main message here is we hope that North Koreans will not take this provocative action and we hope that they will return to the six-party talks. Those talks can still be productive,” Schieffer said.

Analysts have speculated that North Korea — which US President George W. Bush in 2002 branded as part of an “axis of evil” with Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — is trying to regain the limelight at a time that the world is focused on curbing Tehran’s nuclear drive.

Schieffer called on the international community “to speak with one voice” to North Korea.—AFP