UN Meeting Continues On Nth Korea's Nuclear Test

Security Council Expert-Level Meeting Continues On Reported Nuclear Test By DPR Korea

The United Nations Security Council continued with an expert-level meeting today to discuss a draft resolution over the reported nuclear test by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which members have already strongly condemned.

Following consultations on the issue yesterday, the President of the 15-member body for October, Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, told reporters that members urged the DPRK to refrain from further testing and return to the so-called Six-Party Talks that have been seeking to resolve the issue of its nuclear programme.

The Talks between China, DPRK, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States have been going on sporadically in Beijing for several years.

A first expert-level meeting was held later in the day to discuss a draft. On Friday the Council warned the DPRK of unspecified action if it went ahead with the test, which it said would represent a clear threat to international peace and security.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday also called for urgent resumption of the Six-Party Talks.

Mr. Annan said the reported test “violates international norms of disarmament and non-proliferation, as well as the current international moratorium on nuclear testing… it aggravates regional tensions in and around the Korean Peninsula, and jeopardizes security both in the region and beyond.”

Mr. ElBaradei said it “threatens the nuclear non-proliferation regime and creates serious security challenges not only for the East Asian region but also for the international community.”Addressing the General Assembly’s First Committee on Disarmament and International Security yesterday, DPRK representative Pak Gil Yon said that while his country’s ultimate goal was the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it had been compelled to possess a nuclear deterrent for self-defence after the United States had threatened his country with nuclear weapons and designated it as a target for pre-emptive attack.

It was gangster-like logic that only big countries could possess nuclear weapons and attack and threaten small countries with them, he added. Such a double-standard reduced the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and other disarmament conventions to dead documents without any binding force. It was also the reality today that, whether missile launch or nuclear test, if the US approved, it was tolerated and would not be brought to the UN.

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