Moscow - Moscow said Wednesday it is going to step up its military surveillance activities around North Korea, amid the rising tensions over that state's nuclear and missile tests. A Defence Ministry spokesman, cited by the Interfax agency, said that "due to the worsening of the situation" Russia would step up its early-warning surveillance.
The spokesman said that Russia felt obligated to take the measures in the border area "due to the possible use of nuclear weapons." But Moscow was not currently planning to move heavier military equipment into the area.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has held a telephone briefing with his opposite number, South Korea's Lee Myung Bak, about the situation.
Both leaders warned against any escalation of aggression, Medvedev's spokeswoman, Natlia Timakowa, said.
Separately, the foreign ministers of the US and Russia, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sergei Lavrov, have also held a telephone conversation about the situation.
Lavrov said that the international community needed to show a hardness of purpose, whilst remaining open to negotiation.
Lavrov called for a tough United Nations resolution against North Korea, and argued that "it should not be a mere political statement which would have no bearing in practice."
Russia shares a tiny, roughly 50-kilometre, stretch of border with the extreme north-eastern part of North Korea. The border is about 100 kilometres south-west of Russia's Far Eastern port of Vladivostok.
The defence ministry statement is the latest indication of a toughening of Moscow's position towards North Korea in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests of the past few days.
Earlier, the UN Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said his country - which hold the rotating presidency of the Security Council - was examining various proposals, but "it was still too early to discuss them."
And a spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry warned against "hysteria."
"The situation cannot be allowed to get out of control," he added.
According to Konstantin Kossatchov, chair of the foreign affairs committee of the Duma, the situation was rapidly becoming a "worst- case scenario."
However, according to the President of the Moscow Academy for Geo- Political Research, "China will not allow the destabilisation of the region."
"It's a war of nerves, but it will probably remain one the political level," General Leonid Iswachov added.
