Hillary Clinton said Friday it was time for a “rethinking” of America’s strategy for North Korea after the regime’s latest test of a nuclear weapon.
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“Gone are the days when the USA could make a unilateral nuclear blackmail against the DPRK”, Pyongyang’s top newspaper “Rodong Sinmun”, commented, using the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“We will be working very closely in the Security Council and beyond to come up with the strongest possible measure against North Korea’s latest actions”, said Kim.
After the explosion, which caused a major seismic event, USA envoy Sung Kim said they were “working very closely in the Security Council and beyond to come up with the strongest possible measure against North Korea’s latest actions”.
“This is more than brazen defiance”, Power told reporters at United Nations headquarters.
“North Korea is seeking to flawless its nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles so they can hold the region and the world hostage under threat of nuclear strike”, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters ahead of the council meeting. Asked after an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on Friday if he endorses a fresh round of sanctions, Chinese U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi left without answering.
The 15-member council said it will begin to work immediately on appropriate measures, without adding details.
North Korea confirmed on Friday that it had carried out a nuclear test in the country’s northeast.
Recent missile and nuclear tests carried out by the regime indicate it is moving closer to being able to mount a miniaturised nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.
North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-Un with a few of his military advisers.
“It is believed that the North’s nuclear capability is becoming more advanced to a considerable level, and at a faster pace”, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told senior ministry officials in a meeting Saturday, calling for “more and stronger sanctions”.
The paper also accused South Korea’s leadership of being military gangsters and criticized South Korean President Park Geun-Hye of “groundlessly taking issue with the DPRK over its just measures for bolstering nuclear deterrence for self-defense”. According to him, the country faces a number of challenges: natural disasters led to a shortage of food, and worldwide sanctions resulted in the foreign exchange deficit.
It said the test proved North Korea was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit.
“Weakness is simply not an option, North Korea will have to bear the consequences of its actions and provocations”, French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters.
North Korea has been under United Nations sanctions since 2006 – and the impoverished country has continued to speed up the development of its nuclear and missile programmes even though fresh sanctions were enforced in March after months of negotiations, mainly between the USA and China.
South Korea’s military put the force of the blast at 10 kilo tonnes, which would still be the North’s most powerful nuclear blast to date. The North’s fourth test, in January, was an estimated 6 kilotons.
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UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein also designated two independent human rights experts to support the work of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea Tomas Ojea Quintana.
