A visiting British minister Thursday urged North Korea to drop its controversial plan to launch a rocket early next month, saying it would face a strong diplomatic response if it went ahead.
Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said the launch, due between April 4-8, would be "a clear breach" of UN Security Council Resolution 1718.
"What we are trying to do is to persuade North Korea not to go ahead with a launch," Rammell told journalists in Seoul.
"But were North Korea to go ahead with a launch, we would need a strong, coordinated diplomatic response from the international community."
The minister would not elaborate on how Britain and other permanent UN Security Council members would respond.
In a separate interview with Seoul's Yonhap news agency, Rammell said the British foreign ministry conveyed its concern about the launch to the North's ambassador to London on March 13.
The North has said it will launch what it calls a communications satellite, but Seoul and Washington say it is a pretext to test its longest range missile, which could theoretically hit Alaska.
Rammell described the North as "a concern to the whole international community" and said Britain supports South Korea, the US and Japan in treating any launch as a breach of the resolution.
The resolution was passed in 2006 after the North's missile and nuclear tests that year.
