China protests S Korea’s talks with USA on missile shield

The UN Security Council has strongly condemned North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket in violation of worldwide sanctions.

Washington vowed to ensure that the United Nations Security Council imposed serious consequences on Pyongyang after the launch, which followed a January 6 North Korean nuclear test, and sought to reassure its allies South Korea and Japan of its ironclad commitment to defending the region.

North Korea on Sunday defied global warnings and launched a long-range rocket that the United Nations and others call a cover for a banned test of technology for a missile that could strike the USA mainland.

The DPRK said Sunday that it had successfully launched a Kwangmyongsong-4 Earth observation satellite into orbit less than 10 minutes after liftoff at 9:30 a.m. (0030 GMT), about a month after Pyongyang claimed it had successfully its first hydrogen bomb.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We strongly condemn North Korea’s missile launch”.

“The thing we always forget is that every single country that builds a nuclear weapon immediately thinks of ways to make it more sophisticated”, he said.

Secretary of State John Kerry slammed decried the “flagrant violation”, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power called for sanctions “to affect the calculus of a regime that has brazenly and recklessly acted in defiance of global norms”.

North Korea, however, has not yet mastered key technology needed to turn the rocket into an inter-continental ballistic missile – a re-entry vehicle to protect the warhead from heat, the official said.

The official said Washington and Beijing remained in close touch on how to respond to North Korea.

U.S. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, said as far back as October 2014 that he thought North Korea was capable of miniaturizing a nuclear device.

It was not immediately clear whether the South Korean and Japanese chiefs of staff would participate in the meeting in person or via secure video teleconference, the sources said.

Mr Hammond said: “What we will be doing, the United States and Japan will be doing, is seeking to persuade the Chinese that it’s in the interests of all the global community now to apply some more direct economic pressure on North Korea at this point”.

The US, backed by its Western allies, Japan and South Korea, wants tough sanctions reflecting Kim’s defiance of the Security Council.

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the following statement on North Korea’s missile test.