"There is no law allowing Japan to send a satellite into space and banning the DPRK (North Korea) from doing so," a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement.

The statement, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) late Tuesday, came in response to what KCNA called "rumors in the US and Japan that North Korea may launch a ballistic missile again."

The spokesman insisted that a declaration signed by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang last September "remains valid only when it is respected by both sides."

In the declaration, North Korea pledged to extend a 1999 moratorium on ballistic missile testing beyond 2003.

Tokyo has pushed for the launch of spy satellites since 1998 when North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile that overflew the country and splashed down in the Pacific.

North Korea is believed to have deployed some 100 Rodong-1 missiles with a range of 1,300 kilometers (805 miles), capable of striking any target in Japan.

The spokesman said Japan was also intent on joining a Missile Defense System (MD) pushed by Washington.

"Therefore, Japan's sending a spy satellite into space and establishing the MD is a hostile act against the DPRK and poses a grave threat to it," he warned.

"If Japan pulls up the DPRK over its missile issue to justify Japan's use of the spy satellite and introduction of the MD, this cannot be interpreted as a sincere attitude toward the Pyongyang declaration."

North Korea launched a short-range anti-ship missile into the Sea of Japan on February 24 and again last week, sparking fears especially in Japan that the Stalinist nation was preparing to test a ballistic missile.

Analysts say the series of short-range missile tests was part of Pyongyang's game of brinkmanship aimed at breaking US resolve five months into a tense stand-off over the North's nuclear weapons drive.

Pyongyang wants one-to-one talks with Washington to end the standoff, demanding a non-aggression pact as a precondition. The United States has ruled out such talks until North Korea dismantled its nuclear programs.

The crisis erupted in October when Washington said North Korea had admitted to running a secret nuclear program in breach of a 1994 bilateral accord.

Since then Pyongyang has kicked out international weapons inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and fired up a reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear plant that is capable of producing weapons grade plutonium.

The stakes rose higher this month after North Korean fighters armed with heat-seeking missiles surprised a US spy plane over international waters, chasing it for 22 minutes.

WAR.WIRE