“The members of the Security Council strongly condemned this test, which is a grave violation of Security Council resolutions,” South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, whose country is president of the council this month, told reporters. He said the council would now consider “appropriate measures.”
All 15 council members approved the non-binding statement. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said that Washington and its allies want the Security Council to pass a resolution that would “augment the sanctions regime” already in place due to Pyongyang’s 2006 and 2009 atomic tests.
The council statement was agreed at an emergency closed-door session convened by South Korea. Diplomats say negotiations on new sanctions could take weeks since China is likely to resist tough new measures for fear that new sanctions could lead to further retaliation by the North Korean leadership.
Beijing has supported all previous sanctions resolutions against Pyongyang but only after working hard to dilute proposed measures in negotiations on the texts. It has been concerned that tougher sanctions could further weaken the North‘s economy and prompt refugees to flood into China.
The United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - the five permanent members of the 15-nation council - all condemned Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test, which an international nuclear test-monitoring agency in Vienna said was roughly twice as large as that of North Korea‘s 2009 nuclear test.
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Park Sae-jin
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