The UN Security Council will start working immediately on measures in response to the latest nuclear test by North Korea, the council’s president, Gerard van Bohemen of New Zealand, told reporters at UN headquarters in NY on Friday, Sputnik International reported.
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Since China has criticized the planned deployment of a new USA missile defense system to South Korea, it should make serious efforts to rein in the runaway North Korean regime as that is the reason the system will be put in place.
Before the closed-door UN Security Council meeting, US Ambassador Samantha Power said that “North Korea is seeking to ideal its nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles so they can hold the region and the world hostage under threat of nuclear strike”.
“We strongly urge the DPRK side to honour the commitment to denuclearisation, abide by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situation”, the statement said. “The wisdom and foresight of President Park’s decision to accept the deployment of a U.S. Army THAAD battery is on display today”.
Moscow condemns North Korea’s nuclear tests but there should be more “creative” ways of responding to Pyongyang’s activities than simply sanctions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
“This is more than brazen defiance”, Ms Power told reporters at the United Nations headquarters.
Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the IISS-Americas think tank, said it was worth seeing if China might increase pressure on the North in return for the United States and South Korea halting plans to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile defense system created to protect against North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats.
China said it was resolutely opposed to the test but Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying would not be drawn on whether China would support tougher sanctions against its neighbour.
“It is China’s firm stance to achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, prevent nuclear proliferation and promote peace and stability in Northeast Asia”, it said.
The New Zealand diplomat who now chairs the United Nations Security Council has condemned the nuclear weapons test. It took two months of negotiations mainly between the US and China.
“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.
Despite a number of failed missile tests this year, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions have barely been mentioned in this year’s USA presidential race.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides field guidance during a fire drill of ballistic rockets.
The council could take weeks or months to draft a new resolution, which would either impose new sanctions or strengthen the existing one adopted in March.
“Clinton promised to work to end North Korea’s nuclear programme as secretary of state, yet the programme has only grown in strength and sophistication”, Miller added in his statement.
The powerful 15-member council said in a press statement issued after an emergency closed-door meeting that the test poses a clear threat to worldwide peace and security.
The latest nuclear test by North Korea is estimated to produced a blast equivalent to 10 kilotons – twice the power of the country’s last test, according to Korea’s Meteorological Administration.
“The 10-kiloton blast was almost twice the fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons”, Kim Nam-wook, from the South’s meteorological agency, said.
“We will continue to put some of the toughest pressure North Korea has ever been under as a effect of this behavior”, Obama said.
But Pyongyang also has a highly enriched uranium program, which is much more easily concealed and which outsiders know very little about; if that program is advanced, the North could have much more fuel for bomb-building.
“It’s really great news”, said Rim Jong Su, 42.
North Korea was officially founded 68 years ago Friday – the day of the nuclear test – with opposition to the U.S.as its raison d’etre.
France’s UN Ambassador Francois Delattre said: “North Korea will have to bear the consequences of its act and provocation”.
China is North Korea’s strongest political ally and economic lifeline.
Video: What Is North Korea’s Missile Capability?
The seismic event comes just months after North Korea conducted its fourth-ever nuclear detonation, which it had claimed was a successful detonation of a hydrogen bomb.
Despite a United Nations ban and several sets of global sanctions since 2006, the isolated communist state has so far carried out two atomic tests this year. It marks one more step in North Korea’s efforts to develop the missiles and miniaturized warheads needed to reach its perceived enemies.
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Diplomacy has so far failed. Not only that, but the early developments of North Korea’s nuclear program trace back to the 1950s.
