North Korea today sought to justify its weapons programme as a defence against USA nuclear “blackmail” as world powers debated ways to punish Pyongyang for its fifth and most powerful atomic test. The 15 council members will meet at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) for urgent consultations, at the request of the United States and Japan, said the New Zealand mission.
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Earlier Friday, US President Barack Obama spoke to South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who agreed to work with the United Nations body to enforce “additional significant steps, including new sanctions”.
CHINA bears “great responsibility” for the recent nuclear test in Pyongyang, and must take action to reverse the direction in which the hermit kingdom is heading, says U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter.
The UN also called on member states to deport North Korean diplomats and to sanction training to the citizens of North Korea in subjects such as engineering, aerospace, computer simulation, etc.
The North’s fifth nuclear test proved the country’s leader Kim Jong-un’s “maniacal recklessness” in completely ignoring the world’s call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons, Ms Park was quoted as saying by her office. “They aren’t a backwards state any more”, he said.
Gardner said the USA should convene a meeting with South Korean and Japanese officials to develop a coordinated reaction.
The council, which has adopted a resolution imposing additional sanctions every time Pyongyang has conducted a nuclear test, is poised to do so this time, too.
But analysts said it may be getting closer and its testing of ballistic missiles, including those created to launch from submarines, accentuates the threat it poses to US allies South Korea and Japan and ultimately the United States itself.
Although the U.S. has said it is open to diplomatic talks on the denuclearisation of North Korea, the last negotiations in 2008 collapsed.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides field guidance during a fire drill of ballistic rockets.
The South’s president also conceded that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is “uncontrollable” and highlighted the need for strengthening Seoul’s relationship with the US, which has almost 30,000 troops based on the peninsula already along with plans to further develop regional missile defense.
“If it doesn’t have the capability to threaten its neighbors with nuclear weapons yet, it will at some point, probably sooner rather than later”, said James Acton, a physicist who is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The U.S. military is reported to send a WC-135 radiation detection plane to the East Sea to collect radioactive samples.
Agencies in China, reclusive North Korea’s main diplomatic ally, also recorded the tremor.
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But Russia was sceptical that more sanctions were the answer to resolving the crisis, while China was silent on the prospect of a new United Nations Security Council resolution, although state media did carry commentaries criticising the North.
