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UN Security Council to meet Friday on North Korea nuclear test

The isolated communist nation has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since its first test in 2006.

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“The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power”, North Korea said, according to the Associated Press.

President Barack Obama on Friday condemned in “the strongest possible terms” North Korea’s latest and biggest nuclear test, that registered a magnitude-5.3 in seismic activity.

Asked if the ambassador would be summoned, Martin Schaefer told a regular government news conference: “You can expect that”.

North Korea stands out as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons this century.

In addition to January’s nuclear test, North Korea in March claimed to have miniaturized nuclear warheads and has tested several ballistic missiles, including some launched from a submarine.

The United Nations Security Council has announced an emergency meeting after North Korea carried out its fifth nuclear test over night.

South Korea’s Meteorological Administration believes the latest weapon to have contained about 10 kilotons of TNT, which is twice the size of North Korea’s last bomb, but not as large as the bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

China’s foreign ministry said it would lodge a diplomatic protest and urged North Korea to avoid further action that would worsen the situation.

Meanwhile, North Korea said the test had been of a newly developed nuclear warhead and that it is now capable of mounting a nuclear device on ballistic rockets.

President Obama was briefed aboard Air Force One on Thursday night about the reported seismic activity near the North Korean nuclear facility.

According to the spokesman, the USA does not believe North Korea has been able to militarize its nuclear capability but Washington takes Pyongyang at its word that it has that ability.

The South’s President Park Geun-Hye spoke out against the “maniacal recklessness” of Kim, who since taking control after the death of his father in 2011 has carried out a series of purges and weapons tests created to show strength and consolidate power.

“That is not something that North Korea or the Chinese or the Russians in the region are particularly pleased about, but what is the alternative?” she said.

North Korea is now subject to a number of global sanctions regimes, including five sanctions resolutions from the Security Council. The main subject of the session was terrorism and the threat posed by the Islamic State, which Clinton said is not unlike the persistent threat from North Korea.

“T$3 he Obama administration continues to drag its feet, with lackluster implementation of the new sanctions authority Congress provided earlier this year under the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act”, he said.

USA sanctions alone did not stop Iran from moving closer to being able to field a nuclear weapon, Clinton said.

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US Defense Secretary Ash Carter also singled out China’s influence saying the worldwide community should redouble pressure on North Korea after the test, on the 68th anniversary of North Korea’s founding.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un center watches a parade from a balcony