The UN Security Council condemned North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on Friday as a clear threat to worldwide peace and security and said it will start discussing new “significant measures” against Pyongyang.
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It has also been developing a submarine-launched ballistic missile and claims to have mastered “miniaturizing, standardizing and diversifying” warheads to fit on missiles. “They aren’t a backwards state any more”, Lewis said.
A military source told the Yonhap news agency every part of Pyongyang “will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosives shells”.
“The U.S. should never underestimate the tremendous mental power and inexhaustible might of the DPRK”, it added.
Penn: Well, it’s a standoff and clearly North Korea has calculated that showing the world that it can strike back in a physical way it is now basically suggesting that it can put nuclear weapons on missiles and to send them to very far distances, there’s even been some suggestion they could even reach as far as the west coast united states of their missile technology now. “Such provocation will eventually hasten its path to self-destruction”.
“This is the fifth nuclear test conducted by North Korea, and it directly defies the UN Security Council which has demanded that North Korea stop nuclear testing”. Ever since Kim Jong-un took charge in Pyongyang, one has seen a much more belligerent North Korea.
The Pentagon did not have evidence that North Korea had been able to miniaturise a nuclear weapon, Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross said.
Only eight months have passed since January, when the country conducted its previous nuclear test.
North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test Friday morning at 9.00 am local time in yet another defiance of United Nations resolutions. They called the event an “artificial” quake.
Russian experts also think that the goal of these latest demonstrative actions – months before an election in the USA – is to demonstrate the futility of attempts to pressure North Korea into changing its policy and the need to change the strategy, particularly by Washington and Seoul. South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn called an emergency meeting of top security officials.
Russian politicians and experts are troubled that the probable USA response will be to increase its containment potential in the region, a move with a strong anti-Chinese (and anti-Russian) elements.
President Obama said that any provocative actions by North Korea would have “serious consequences”, according to a statement by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. It did not directly mention Friday’s nuclear test.
Xinhua News Agency, China’s official press, reported that Beijing expressed “firm opposition” to the nuclear test and that it will, along with the global community, keep working toward the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and commit to settling problems through the six-party talks.
NORTH KOREA’S latest nuclear test has been condemned by the United Nations which promised new sanctions against the country’s regime.
The decision came after an urgent meeting of the UN’s 15-member Security Council, with the US, Britain and France all pushing for quick and strong-action against Pyongyang.
Seoul’s present approach is “excessively lopsided” toward sanctions and pressure, which he said would not be a decisive cure for the nuclear standoff alone and could also make it harder to pull support from China, which apparently holds the largest sway over the defiant Kim regime.
The sanctions included more embargoes on trade, the source mentioned.
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Beijing on Friday said it “firmly opposes” the test. Chinese leaders fear that instability in Pyongyang could precipitate a flood of refugees into northeastern China and push a US -friendly unified Korea right up to China’s doorstep.
