Russia’s Foreign Minister warned against making premature conclusions about North Korea’s planned rocket launch. “We find it important to base our opinion on the factual situation instead of making hasty conclusions; it would be good not to assess the event before it happened,” he told as much the press-conference in Moscow on 26th.

Lavrov also stressed the importance of observing by Pyongyang of the UN resolution, banning its tests of ballistic missiles. North Korea has announced that it plans to launch a rocket with a communications satellite on board in early April. However, the USA, South Korea and Japan suspect that this will be a test of a missile that can reach the USA, with a nuclear warhead on board.

Reportedly, North Korea plans to carry out the launch between the 4th and the 8th of April.

Meanwhile, ISIS has obtained commercial satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe taken at approximately 11:00 AM local time on March 29, 2009 of the Musudan-ri missile site in North Korea. The missile is clearly visible in this image.

A close-up DigitalGlobe satellite image of the launch pad at the Musudanri missile site on March 29, 2009. The missile is clearly visible in this image and it is also casting a shadow.

According to news reports, the missile was installed on or after Tuesday, March 24, 2009. Since the missile is so easily seen in this image versus in imagery over the past several days since March 24, it is likely that North Korea was previously shrouding the missile.