North Korea could deploy a nuclear-armed missile within five years, a senior South Korean official said Friday in what would be the first such assessment on the North's nuclear weapons capability, according to Yonhap News Agency.

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said on Tuesday that if reports of North Korea withdrawing its missiles from the eastern part of the country prove to be true, it would be seen as a positive step. "If the reports about the removal of ballistic missiles from their launch pads are correct, we would welcome that as a step in the right direction," Martin Nesirky said at a briefing.

North Korea has taken two Musudan missiles off launch-ready status and moved them from their position in the eastern part of the country, diplomatic sources familiar with Korean affairs said Tuesday. The U.S. cable news network CNN quoted a U.S. administration official as saying the missiles have been moved to a storage facility, while an official told Reuters news agency they were taken to a nonoperational location. North Korea moved the intermediate-range missiles after weeks of concern that it was poised to fire them.

North Korea has moved two missiles primed for imminent test firing from a launch site, American officials said Monday, as North Asia tensions eased slightly on the eve of a US-South Korea summit. US and South Korean officials had been worried Pyongyang would heighten a cycle of provocation, which has included threats of nuclear war, by firing the Musudan missiles, which have a range of up to 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers). But a US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity: "they moved them," and added that there was no longer an imminent threat of a launch.