Confirmado:Marino escreveu:O navio partiu no meio.
Torpedo ou mina, mais para torpedo.
From Times Online April 22, 2010
By Richard Lloyd Parry
UK Times
April 22, 2010
The South Korean naval ship sunk last month was hit by a North Korean
torpedo, according to reports today.
The claim will heap more pressure on Lee Myung Bak, the South Korean
President, to respond to one of the worst military acts of provocation since
the Korean War.
The South Korean Defence Ministry declined to comment on the claim by the
Yonhap news agency, the latest in a series of reports suggesting that the
mysterious sinking of the naval corvette, Cheonan, last month was a
deliberate and unprovoked attack by North Korea.
Forty-six sailors are dead or missing after the attack, which cut the 1,200
tonne vessel in two.
President Lee's government appears to be struggling to find an appropriate
response that would demonstrate its resolve in th e face of aggression but
stop short of a costly and unpredictable war.
"Military intelligence has made the report to the Blue House [the
presidential office] and to the Defence Ministry immediately after the
sinking of the Cheonan that it is clearly the work of North Korea's
military," a military source told Yonhap.
"North Korean submarines are all armed with heavy torpedoes with 200kg
[441lb] warheads. It is the military intelligence's assessment that the
North attacked with a heavy torpedo."
In a sign of the continuing confusion surrounding the incident, a separate
report suggested that the attack was caused not by a remotely fired torpedo
but by a manned suicide submarine which exploded under the ship's hull.
The speculation is that this was an act of retaliation for a naval skirmish
in November last year in which the North came off worse.
"Military authorities detecte d several signs showing that the North was
preparing for revenge for its defeat in the sea skirmish in November," a
government official told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.
"The North intensively trained military units for various means of attack,
in particular human torpedoes."
South Korea's conservative government prides itself on taking a tough and
robust attitude to North Korean aggression, by comparison with its liberal
predecessors who sometimes played down or overlooked provocations in the
interests of a long-term improvement in relations with Pyongyang.
Some security officials favour a tit-for-tat response to any North Korean
aggression. But the risk is that this could escalate into a war, which might
result in eventual victory for the South and its US allies, but could be
ruinously destructive and expensive.
A limited war might be exactly what the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il , is
hoping for. After decades of economic decline and famine in the 1990s which
killed as many as a few million people, his economy is in chronic decline.
A military adventure against the routinely demonised "imperialist" US and
its South Korean "lackeys" could serve as a welcome and unifying
distraction.
"It's obvious that Kim Jong Il did it," said Hwang Jang Yop, a former senior
North Korean politician who defected in 1997, in an interview published
today.
"We already know Kim Jong Il has been preparing for this kind of incident."
South Koreans have been dismayed by what many see as irresolute handling of
the incident and a reluctance to tell the truth to relatives of its young
victims.
"No one wants to say it out loud," wrote Song Ho Keun, a professor at Seoul
National University in the Joong-Ang Ilbo newspaper.
"We told ourselves to be patient and cool, n ot to jump to conclusions as
there is no definitive evidence implicating the North. But if we find one
little piece of evidence pointing definitely at North Korea, the rage we
have forcibly suppressed will gush forth."
![8-]](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif "Cool"){kind=icon}
, pafuncio.
