SEOUL, 11 October 2006 — North Korean officials warned their nation could fire a nuclear-tipped missile if the US spurns dialogue on Pyongyang’s terms in the wake of the country’s atomic test, South Korean media reported yesterday.
“We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes,” an unnamed North Korean official said, according to a Yonhap news agency report from Beijing. “That depends on how the US will act.”
The first North Korean official, who spoke with Yonhap, also indicated that the North wants direct talks with the US, saying that the test is an “expression of our intention to face the United States across the negotiating table.”
Monday’s test strained the North’s relations with its main ally China, with Beijing swiftly denouncing Pyongyang. China’s UN ambassador, Wang Guangya, told reporters: “I think that there has to be some punitive actions.” He added: “We need to have a firm, constructive, appropriate but prudent response to North Korea’s nuclear threat.”
In Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called the reported test a “colossal blow” to the non-proliferation regime but, like China, insisted an eventual United Nations resolution on this issue should not involve the use of force.
“For us that is very important... imagine if there was military action on the territory of North Korea... North Korea has borders with three countries, and one of them is Russia,” he told reporters.
The United States, France and Britain, the other Council permanent members, agreed that tough measures were needed fast. But no vote has been scheduled.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged yesterday that Japan, the only nation to suffer an atomic attack, would not be provoked into developing nuclear weapons. Abe, a conservative who supports a stronger role for Japan’s military, rejected speculation that the North Korean announcement would trigger a regional arms race.
Iran yesterday pinned the blame for North Korea’s nuclear test on the refusal of world powers to abandon their atomic weapons and the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country would pursue its right to develop nuclear technology.
“The major powers feel that they are entitled to use and produce nuclear weapons,” government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters in Tehran. “This injustice, inequality and discrimination in international law has resulted in such threats to world peace” as the North Korean test, he added.
State television quoted Khamenei as saying at a meeting of high-ranking government officials: “Our policy is clear: progress with clear logic and insisting on the nation’s right without any retreat.”
