An emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council has exposed divisions over how to respond to North Korea's launching of at least six missiles, including one designed to reach the west coast of the United States. Denis Staunton, Washington Correspondent, reports.
The US and Britain have backed a Japanese call for a tough resolution imposing sanctions on the reclusive, impoverished state but Russia and China want a weaker statement that would stop short of sanctions.
The launch of the long-range Taepodong-2 appears to have been unsuccessful, with the missile plunging harmlessly into the Sea of Japan just 42 seconds after take-off. The US placed its interceptor missiles in Alaska and California on alert for the missile, the first time an anti-missile shield has been officially reported to have been primed in response to a specific threat.
President George Bush said yesterday that the failure of North Korea's long-range missile test did nothing to reduce the need to put pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons programme.
"What these firings of the rockets have done is, they've isolated themselves further and that's sad for the people of North Korea," he said.
North Korea rejected international criticism of the tests and a foreign ministry official told Japanese journalists in Pyongyang that the regime has an undeniable right to test missiles.
"The missile launch is an issue that is entirely within our sovereignty," the official said. "No one has the right to dispute it. On the missile launch, we are not bound by any agreement."
Japan, which is within range of North Korea's medium-range missiles, yesterday drafted a United Nations resolution calling on Pyongyang to "immediately cease the development, testing, deployment and proliferation of ballistic missiles and reconfirm its moratorium on missile launching" and urging an immediate return to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme.
The resolution says UN member states should prevent "the transfer of financial resources, items, materials, goods and technology to end users that could contribute to [ North Korea's] missile and other weapons of mass destruction programmes." The US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said no member of the security council defended the missile launch.
"The tenor of that discussion shows how little support there is in the international community as a whole for these North Korean missile launches," Mr Bolton said.
Russian ambassador Vitali Churkin said that although Moscow had "serious concerns" about the missile tests, he opposed sanctions and favoured a diplomatic solution.
"In my mind, we could consider the format of a presidential statement," Mr Churkin said. "I would caution you against whipping up emotions too much."
US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill left Washington yesterday for a tour of Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea and possibly China. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that international condemnation of the missile launches showed that the dispute was not one between North Korea and the US.
"The international community does have at its disposal a number of tools to make it more difficult for North Korea to engage in this kind of brinkmanship and to engage in the continued pursuit of its nuclear weapons programmes and of its missile programmes," she said.
Pyongyang wants one-on-one talks with Washington on the nuclear issue and has abandoned six-party talks with China, Russia, the US, Japan and South Korea.
Mr Bush said his senior national security advisers and US diplomats were working with other countries to try to persuade North Korea to rejoin the talks. "I am deeply concerned about the plight of the people of North Korea.
"I would hope the government would agree to verifiably abandon its weapons programmes. I would hope that there would be a better opportunity for that government and for the people to move forward," he said.