North Korea says it will launch long-range rocket next month SEOUL - North Korea said Friday that it intends to blast a satellite into space using a long-range rocket, a move that all but reverses its recent promise to Washington to abstain from provocations, including long-range launches. North Korea described the launch as both and scientific and celebratory: It will take between April 12 and 16, Pyongyang said, to mark the centenary of founder Kim Il Sung's birth. But the launch also raised immediate condemnation from the Seoul, which called the rocket test a "grave provocative act against peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia." The North's announcement comes just 16 days after an agreement with the U.S. in which the famine-stricken Pyongyang said it would halt parts of its nuclear program and suspend all weapons tests in exchange for 240,000 metric tons of food aid. Even if the North's rocket propels a satellite, rather than a missile, into orbit, the launch figures to jeopardize the deal - which U.S. officials had described as a tentative first step to better relations with new leader Kim Jong Eun. Both U.S. and South Korean government officials have described the North Korean satellite program as a cover for long-range missile tests, because they use similar technology and are difficult for outsiders to distinguish. After a similar launch in 2009, the United Nations tightened sanctions against the North, adding a measure to ban Pyongyang from future launches. "If North Korea does conduct the launch, it kills the food deal," said Dan Pinkston, a Seoul-based security expert at the International Crisis Group. For the Obama administration, it becomes politically impossible.