By Jonathan Thatcher
Seoul - Reclusive North Korea insisted on Friday that its missile launches were not an attack on anyone, as a senior United States envoy arrived in Asia to push Washington's case that a dangerous Pyongyang must be brought to heel.
The United States has stumbled in attempts to impose United Nations Security Council sanctions on North Korea for its July 4 missile tests because of opposition from Russia and China.
"This (the missile launches) is not an attack on someone," North Korea's councillor at the UN mission in Geneva, Choe Myong-nam, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
Defying near-universal condemnation of the firings, North Korea has vowed to carry out more launches and has threatened to use force if the international community tries to stop it.
"From an international point of view, it is not fair to say who can do one thing and who can't," Choe said. "The same applies to possessing nuclear weapons."
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Washington sent its envoy on North Korea, Christopher Hill, to Asia to seek a unified stand. His first stop was Beijing, the nearest the communist state has to an international ally.
"It is in our interests that we send a clear message to the leaders of North Korea," US President George Bush told a news conference on Thursday.
But Bush rejected what many believe North Korea's leader internationally isolated leader Kim Jong-il really wants - direct talks between US and North Korean officials.
"I think the best way to solve this problem diplomatically is for there to be other nations around the table with us, so that when he looks out and he looks at the table, he looks at the world."
Chinese President Hu Jintao has told Bush that he opposes "anything that would threaten peace and stability" on the Korean peninsula, the White House said.
And Russian President Vladimir Putin, about to host the annual summit of the Group of Eight leaders, also urged caution, saying the missile launch should not trigger an emotional reaction "that would drown out common sense".
In February 2005, North Korea said it possessed nuclear weapons. Since then, it threatened several times to bolster its nuclear arsenal to counter what it sees as US hostililty.
International talks with Pyongyang to have it scrap its nuclear programmes have stalled since late last year.
North Korea's state media called its launch of at least seven missiles a success that reflected the country's military prowess. But the most powerful of the missiles - the Taepodong-2, which military analysts say might be able to reach Alaska - reportedly fizzled out after about 40 seconds in the air.
Japan's Sankei Shimbun daily quoted a number of sources in the United States and Japan as saying that the Taepodong-2 had been aimed at an area of the ocean close to Hawaii.
South Korea has said movements around a North Korean launch site suggest more tests. North Korea has said there will be more.
Japan had pressed for tough UN action after North Korea fired a missile over its territory in 1998 but ended up with a tepid statement from the Security Council that did not chastise Pyongyang for the launch.
There has been no international consensus on how to take Pyongyang to task for the latest missile tests.
"Pyongyang either was not fearful of the threatened consequences or, more likely, having flaunted international protocols so often in the past without serious repercussions... assumed that the latest threats are also hollow," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think-tank.
South Korea, its government under attack at home for being too soft on its northern neighbour, has delayed military talks with the North because of the missile launch.
A Unification Ministry official said any thought to giving more aid to the impoverished North would also be put on ice for now, though he added this did not mean Seoul would no longer send it humanitarian assistance.
Some analysts say North Korea was trying to remind the world that the risks of conflict were serious on the Korean peninsula, the Cold War's last frontier and home to some 30 000 US troops.
"North Korea may or may not face a few hard weeks or months in reprisal, but it has reminded everyone just how serious a threat North Korea can be," said Anthony Cordesman in an analysis for the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
North Korea has for years been trying to draw Washington into direct talks, seeking a grand deal to end the technical state of war on the peninsula that has persisted since the 1950-53 Korea War ended in an armed truce instead of a peace treaty.
(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Seoul and Steve Holland in Washington)
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