North Korea charged yesterday the United States was using a spy plane to prepare a sneak attack on it – while the Bush administration said Pyongyang’s new missile test was a thinly disguised extortion demand.
The escalating rhetoric rattled financial markets and even worried China, the North’s major ally, into calling for “restraint and calm.”
The latest salvo came from North Korea’s official news agency which charged that “U.S. imperialist warhawks” sent a missile-spotting RC-135 spy plane into its air space several times recently, including Monday.
A Pentagon spokesman denied any air-space violation.
The White House ridiculed the missile launch as an attempted shakedown.
“This is North Korea’s way of saying ‘Please pay me,'” spokesman Ari Fleischer said. Wire Services