Efforts by other countries to block such an advance were “nothing more than a puppy barking towards the moon”, he said.
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He also said that Japan is now considering its own sanctions against Pyongyang.
At an emergency meeting Sunday, members of the Security Council “strongly condemned” the launch and reaffirmed that “a clear threat to global peace and security continues to exist, especially in the context of the nuclear test”.
Carreno went on, “In line with this commitment and the gravity of this most recent violation, the council will adopt expeditiously a new security council resolution with such measures in response to this risky and serious violation”. The U.N. Security Council prohibits North Korea from nuclear and ballistic missile activity.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye called the launch a “challenge to world peace”, while her government announced it would begin talks with the United States to deploy a defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, which can intercept missiles in flight.
But critics including Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have said the system could help USA radar spot missiles from China.
Washington moved one of its five THAAD systems to Guam in 2013 following North Korean threats, and is now studying the possibility of converting a Hawaii test site for a land-based version of the shipboard Aegis missile defense system into a combat-ready facility.
Russia’s United Nations ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, whose country is also a North Korean ally, said: “It has to be a weighty resolution, but it also has to be a reasonable resolution” that doesn’t lead to North Korea’s economic or humanitarian collapse, or further heighten tensions.
The South’s Defense Ministry says it can not immediately confirm the report.
It said the North Korean rocket was launched at 9:31 a.m. Japan time. The North Korean rocket on Sunday flew over Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture.
In a commentary Monday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said a deployment could trigger a regional arms race.
US Strategic Command on Monday said it continued to track two objects put into orbit by North Korea, the rocket payload or satellite, and the rocket body. North Korea has previously staged rocket launches to mark important anniversaries.
“The date of the launch appears to be in consideration of the weather condition and ahead of the Lunar New Year and the U.S. Super Bowl”, said Jo Ho-young, chairman of the South Korean National Assembly Intelligence Committee.
South Korea, Japan, and the United States consider the launch to be a missile test in disguise that violates several UN Security Council resolutions.
Noting China’s pivotal role in negotiating a new Security Council resolution, Britain’s deputy United Nations ambassador, Peter Wilson, said: “Today is Chinese New Year’s eve and if I was a senior Chinese official, I would be pretty annoyed at what’s been happening here”.
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CBS cited that no signals have ever been confirmed by outside observers from the Kwangmyongsong 3 which the North sent into orbit in December 2012.
