Clinton said she will protect allies and treaty partners in the region including equipping them with missile defense systems.
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U.S. President Barack Obama said after speaking by telephone with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that they had agreed to work with the Security Council and other powers to vigorously enforce existing measures against North Korea and to take “additional significant steps, including new sanctions”. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, was in 2003 found to have traded know-how and technology with Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Christopher Hill, the former United States ambassador to South Korea, said Friday it’s time to stop guessing about North Korea’s capabilities and start planning a response.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a 5.3 magnitude seismic event near the Punggyi-ri nuclear test site. North Korea has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006, but has insisted it will continue, come what may.
Philip Yun, executive director of the Ploughshares Fund, an organization that aims to eliminate nuclear weapons, also said the world can not delay a response to North Korea’s testing.
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the council must use “every tool at its disposal” including new sanctions “to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for its unlawful and unsafe actions”.
South Korea’s main spy agency told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing after the test that it does not think North Korea now has the ability to develop nuclear weapons that can be mounted on ballistic missiles, but intelligence officials expressed worries that the North’s efforts to do so are progressing more quickly than previously thought, said Kim Byungkee, a lawmaker from the opposition Minjoo Party.
Service personnel and civilians lay floral baskets, bouquets and flowers before the statues of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il on the 68th founding anniversary of the DPRK in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) September 9, 2016.
The last serious talks with North Korea on denuclearization, the six-party talks, ended in 2009.
During his stay in NY, the country’s top diplomat will hold a meeting with his counterparts from the USA and Japan to discuss how to impose stronger sanctions on Pyongyang, the ministry said.
Pyongyang’s state media said the test had realised the country’s goal of being able to fit a miniaturised warhead on a rocket.
Estimates vary, but North Korea may have about 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium, according to a 2014 South Korean report, which is enough for about seven atomic bombs.
“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. Beijing recently prevented any United Nations response to a North Korean missile test in retaliation for USA plans to deploy the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) ballistic missile defense to South Korea.
South Korea’s military put the force of the blast at 10 kilotonnes, which would still be the North’s most powerful nuclear blast to date.
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Stephen Schwartz, an independent nuclear weapons expert, said that North Korea’s statement about the test suggested that the detonated nuclear device employed a composite fissile core that used both plutonium and highly enriched uranium, which, if true, would enable the North to build more nuclear weapons than would be otherwise possible with plutonium or uranium alone.
