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Cheney plays down NK strike calls U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney has played down calls for a pre-emptive military strike to destroy a potential North Korean missile launch site. Fears have grown in recent weeks following reports of activity at a site in northeastern North Korea where U.S. officials say a Taepodong-2 missile -- believed capable of reaching parts of the United States -- is possibly being fueled. An op-ed piece in Thursday's Washington Post by William Perry, secretary of defense under former President Bill Clinton, and Ashton Carter, Clinton's assistant secretary of defense, advocates a pre-emptive strike to destroy the missile. "The United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched," it said. Cheney, however, told CNN that, while "I appreciate Bill's advice," such an action could worsen the situation. "I think, at this stage, we are addressing the issue in the proper fashion ... obviously, if you are going to launch strikes at another nation, you better be prepared to not fire just one shot. The fact of the matter is, I think, the issue is being addressed appropriately." Washington has urged China -- North Korea's last major ally and benefactor -- to press North Korea to abandon any possible missile test. U.S. President George W. Bush praised China on Wednesday for "taking responsibility in dealing with North Korea." China said Thursday all parties should try to reach a peaceful solution to the issue and urged a return to diplomacy. "We are very concerned about the current situation," The Associated Press reported Jiang Yu, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, as saying on Thursday. "We hope all parties can do more in the interest of regional peace and stability," he said, adding that China would also "continue to make constructive efforts." North Korea has complained about alleged recent U.S. spy flights, including some near the area where the missile test facility is located. On Thursday, the North slammed Washington again. "The U.S. imperialist warmongers have been intensifying military provocations against" the North, the country's official Korean Central News Agency said, according to AP. "The ceaseless illegal intrusion of the planes has created a grave danger of military conflict in the air above the region." A North Korean official on Wednesday said Pyongyang had a right to test its missiles and was seeking to resolve any concerns through direct talks with the United States. But Washington has repeatedly refused to hold direct talks with North Korea, saying any discussions should involve the nation's neighbors. This was a point reiterated again on Wednesday. "You don't normally engage in conversations by threatening to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles," AP quoted U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton as saying on Wednesday in New York. Some U.S. officials have said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may be using the missile test threat to gain diplomatic leverage amid efforts to restart six-nation talks aimed at curbing Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. The talks have stalled after Pyongyang refused to return, angry over an American crackdown on its alleged illicit financial activity. The two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the U.S. are part of those talks. Bush warned North Korea on Wednesday it would face further isolation if it violated agreements by test launching the missile. "The North Koreans have made agreements with us in the past, and we expect them to keep their agreements," Bush said during a news conference at the end of a European Union summit. "It should make people nervous when non-transparent regimes, that have announced that they've got nuclear warheads, fire missiles," Bush said. "This is not the way you conduct business in the world. This is not the way that peaceful nations conduct their affairs." Bush said the U.S. was reaching out to other nations to send the message to North Korea that "in order to be an accepted nation, a non-isolated nation, there are certain international norms that you must live by, and we expect them to live by those norms." Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, standing next to Bush, said he "couldn't agree more" with the United States position. "If this happens, there will be a strong statement, a strong answer from the international community and Europe will be part of it," he said. North Korea has sometimes engaged in surprise behavior to attract international attention when it felt it was being ignored, and it might feel slighted over Washington's current focus on resolving the nuclear issue with Iran, U.S. officials have said. While cloud cover has been obscuring the North Korean launching site where the missile is reportedly sitting, U.S. ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer said Wednesday that Washington believed "steps have been taken for a real test" and all options were available for an American response. "We have greater technical measures of tracking than in the past, and we have options that we have not had in the past, and all these options are on the table," Schieffer said Wednesday, responding to reporters' questions about how the United States would react to such a test. Officials said the Pentagon could try to use its missile defense system to shoot down the North Korean missile. The military has nine interceptor missiles based in Alaska and two in California. (Watch how the Pentagon could respond to a North Korean missile launch -- 2:02 Visit canceled South Korea's current unification minister, Lee Jong-seok, said humanitarian aid Seoul supplies to the North, such as rice and fertilizer, could be affected if a missile is tested, according to the AP. Japan, South Korea, the United States and Australia have united in saying that any test-launching would result in serious consequences, seeing such a move as a provocation. A test of a Taepodong-2 missile would be North Korea's first long-range missile test since 1998, when Pyongyang surprised the world and sparked an international crisis by firing an intermediate-range missile over Japan. North Korea has observed a self-declared moratorium on long-range missile testing since 1999, and a 2005 pledge that calls on it and its neighbors, as well as the United States, to maintain peace and security in northeast Asia. But North Korea has said that the moratorium stands only when the country is in dialogue with the United States. "Some say our missile test launch is a violation of the moratorium, but this is not true," said Han Suk-Ryul, the North Korean representative at the United Nations, in a phone interview with Yonhap. CNN's David Ensor, Sohn Jie-Ae, Atika Shubert and Barbara Starr contributed to this report. ---------------------------------------------------
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