N. Korea Reportedly Developing Long-Range Missile

North Korea, the only nation that still openly exports ballistic missiles, is developing a new weapon with a range of almost 1,000 miles, enough to make almost any buyer a threat to its neighbors, a senior State Department official said Friday.

The official said that if the Pyongyang regime, which has sold shorter-range Scud missiles to Iran and Syria, exports its latest missile to Middle Eastern countries, “it would be very destabilizing.”

There was no indication of when the missile will go into production.

The official discussed the North Korean project after announcing that in talks held here, the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China agreed to new guidelines controlling the export of nuclear, chemical and missile weaponry.

The guidelines parallel restrictions already imposed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Missile Technology Control Regime and the Australia group accord on chemical weapons. The United States, Britain and France have signed the three earlier pacts, but neither Russia nor China has accepted them all. By accepting the guidelines now, Russia and China “can agree to do some things in the way of missiles and chemicals that they have not agreed to do before,” the official said.

Although the guidelines apply worldwide, they were developed during five-nation negotiations on arms sales to the Middle East. The Washington meeting was the third round of talks in the year since President Bush called on the five nations--which account for 80% of the Middle East arms market--to restrain their sales to the volatile region. The five will meet again in a few months in Moscow.

The official said there have been no major breakthroughs but that there has been “continued progress.”

Washington is urging the five nations to agree to notify each other in advance of all arms sales to the Middle East. Now, only the United States reveals any of its arms export plans to the public.