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.
ends