UN Security Council to issue statement on North Korea missile launch

The UN Security Council has agreed at an emergency meeting to consider issuing a statement on the latest North Korean missile launch.

Malaysia’s UN Ambassador Ramlan Bin Ibrahim, the current council president, told reporters yesterday after the closed meeting that “there was a general sense of condemnation by most members of the council.”

He said the United States is drafting the text of a press statement “and we will have a look at it.”

After North Korea’s previous missile test, the US also proposed a press statement, but diplomats said China insisted on language linking it to US plans to place a high-tech missile defense system in South Korea. So the US dropped the statement, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

The Security Council in March imposed the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, reflecting growing anger at Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test and rocket launch in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity.

China, Russia and others expressed hope when it was adopted that the sanctions would lead to the immediate resumption of six-party talks aimed at the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
 North Korea withdrew from the talks in 2008.

But the North has continued to launch ballistic missiles and tensions have mounted. 

Yesterday’s launch came two days after the US and South Korea began military exercises, prompting North Korean threats of retaliation for the military drills, which it views as an invasion rehearsal.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Petr Iliichev, asked about yesterday’s meeting, said there was the “usual condemnation for violation of resolutions.”

But he said council members also stressed the “responsibility of the regional actors” for not implementing the March resolution and finding a way “for stabilisation (and a) political, diplomatic, political solution to the problem.”

The US and Japan called for the emergency meeting after North Korea fired a ballistic missile from a submarine earlier yesterday.

South Korean officials said the missile flew about 500 kilometres, the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon.