The United Nations Security Council has unanimously condemned North Korea’s satellite launch and reiterated its readiness to pass a resolution providing for tough response measures, Venezuela’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Rafael Ramirez, who is acting as Security Council president in February, said on Sunday after a two-hour extraordinary Security Council meeting.
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All 15 council members approved a statement condemning the launch and pledging to “expeditiously” adopt a new resolution with “significant” new sanctions.
“North Korea has committed an unacceptable provocation of launching a long-range missile after conducting a fourth nuclear test”, Ms Park said in a meeting of the South’s national security council.
Hailing it as part of the country’s peaceful space programme, a state TV newsreader said the launch had been ordered by North Korea’s leader Kim Jon-un and more satellite launches were planned for the future. But diplomats say China, the North’s key protector in the council, is reluctant to impose economic measures that could cause North Korea’s economy to collapse – and a flight of North Koreans into China across their shared border.
UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon has called Pyongyang’s actions “deplorable”. The UN Security Council has applied sanctions before, to little effect. A statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized the rocket launch, calling on the North Korean leadership “to think about whether the policy of opposing the entire worldwide community is serving the interests of the country”. If any change is possible in the country it should come from within North Korea itself.
Debate moderator Martha Raddatz followed up by asking Cruz if he would take out a North Korean missile on the launch pad through a preemptive strike.
U.S. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, said as far back as October 2014 that he thought North Korea was capable of miniaturizing a nuclear device.
Pyongyang defied worldwide warnings in going ahead with the launch just over a month after the secretive state carried out what it claimed was its first successful test of a hydrogen bomb.
The United States was tracking the rocket launch and said it did not believe that it posed a threat to the United States or its allies defense officials said.
Even China, North Korea’s sole big power ally, expressed disapproval about the launch.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service believes the payload of the satellite launched into orbit is about twice that of the 220-pound satellite that North Korea launched into orbit in 2012, according to AP.
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Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se plans to visit the U.N. headquarters in NY on Tuesday and Wednesday, where he will ask the U.N. Security Council to slap stronger and more effective sanctions on North Korea, according to the Foreign Ministry. “China wants any steps to be measured but it wants the council to send a clear message to DPRK (North Korea) that it must comply with council resolutions”. If they have only rockets, that’s not that intimidating, either. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will fly before they test it”. “So it becomes a global issue”, said Kwon Sejin, a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
