DANDONG, China-Tourists and the odd train made their way across China’s main border point with North Korea on Saturday, with residents largely brushing off Pyongyang’s fifth and largest nuclear test and little sign of stepped up security or scrutiny.
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“More South Koreans will want nuclear weapons of their own and more Japanese will want offensive strike capabilities”, said Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Washington office of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
“This unacceptable act endangers peace and security in the region and is another vivid reminder of the urgent need to strengthen the global nuclear test ban regime”, he stressed. However, she thought it would be up to another decade before Pyongyang developed a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S.
Gerard von Bohemen, New Zealand’s Ambassador to the United Nations, announced after presiding over an emergency meeting of the Security Council in NY on Friday “appropriate measures” aimed at Pyongyang were being developed.
The UN Security Council agreed on Friday immediately to begin work on a new series of sanctions.
The measures will be under Article 41 of the UN Charter, which specifies non-military actions including sanctions.
U.S. President Barack Obama condemned North Korea’s nuclear test on Friday.
Their stance is very much in line with a statement out of New York Friday, when the UNSC “strongly condemned” North Korea’s behavior and promised to work on a new resolution – implying that veto-wielding council member China will hold true to its word by pressuring its old ally. It took two months of negotiations mainly between the U.S. and China. “They will hit the ports where our troops would be massing, thinking that we would be shocked into stopping”, he said.
The test – Pyongyang’s fifth and most powerful – had enough force to “rip the heart out of a city”, one expert said.
It did not directly mention Friday’s nuclear test. “This has definitely put on a higher level [North Korea’s] technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets”.
While she was secretary of state, North Korea broke off worldwide talks aimed at ending its nuclear program and violated United Nations bans on testing long-range missiles and nuclear weapons.
A day earlier North Korea conducted a “higher level” nuclear warhead test explosion, which it trumpeted as finally allowing it to build “at will” an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.
But the North’s ruling party newspaper vowed Saturday not to submit to United States nuclear “blackmail”, and described the South’s President Park Geun-Hye as a “dirty prostitute” for working with USA forces.
Speaking with some frustration, he said that when it comes to the Korean peninsula, the secretary-general has no mandate from either the U.N. Security Council or the General Assembly, and he has not been able to appoint a special envoy or a special adviser on Korean issues. “Such actions are a threat to security and stability not only in Northeast Asia but also the world as a whole”, the press service of Belarus Foreign Ministry said.
“The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state”, he said in a statement.
New Zealand has taken a leading role in the response to what has been described at the United Nations as North Korea’s “insane” nuclear arms build-up and clear threat to worldwide peace and security.
The North’s latest test, preceded by a volley of missile launches in recent months, sparked worldwide condemnation.
Business between the two is dwarfed by trade between China and capitalist South Korea, which was worth 908 billion yuan ($135.97 billion) in the January to July period, compared to just 17.7 billion yuan between China and North Korea.
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In that piece, he said he’d bomb North Korea if it didn’t give up its nuclear ambitions. Senior officials from Pyongyang were in both capitals this week.
