International Response

N.Korea may face more sanctions after nuclear test

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-10-09 16:58

SINGAPORE - North Korea may face more sanctions after raising the nuclear ante in Asia with the announcement of an atomic test, though an outbreak of war appears unlikely now, officials and analysts said on Monday.

While defence officials and seismologists reported seismic activity that could indicate a small atomic blast in North Korea, the reaction was loud and clear.

"We are outraged that a country that has to rely on the international community to feed its own people, and to bring them back from the brink of starvation, devotes so many of its scarce resources to missiles and nuclear weapons progress," Australian Prime Minister John Howard told parliament.

The White House called it a "provocative act, in defiance of the will of the international community".

The United States had not taken any military action in response and was not at this point moving military assets to the region, White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
But U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, is going to ask the Security Council to meet in an emergency session, he said.

Britain, a Security Council member, condemned the test.

"This further act of defiance shows North Korea's disregard for the concerns of its neighbours and the wider international community," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a statement.

Japan, which many analysts saw as most directly threatened by any North Korean nuclear test, said it was considering options for further sanctions against Pyongyang and might push for a new UN Security Council resolution.

"The prime minister's office has been working on options for additional sanctions over the past two or three days," Foreign Minister Taro Aso told reporters. "So probably Japan would take those actions, but it would have to decide which options to take."

China denounced the test as "brazen".

"The Chinese government is firmly opposed to this," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Beijing also called on Pyongyang to return to six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme in exchange for aid and security guarantees.

North Korea has boycotted the talks, which Beijing has hosted, for almost a year in protest over U.S. sanctions on its alleged illicit financial activities.

South Korea, a key source of aid and investment in the North, said it will deal sternly with Pyongyang. Presidential spokesman Yoon Tae-young said Seoul wants the matter brought to the United Nations, where South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will be formally nominated as UN secretary-general later on Monday.

MORE TESTS?

The UN Security Council has already imposed an embargo on dangerous weapons and related materials going or leaving North Korea after the country test-fired a volley of missiles in July.

"If it is only one weapon, it would be a positive sign," former UN weapons inspector David Albright told CNN in an interview.

"If they conducted two, three or four tests it would be more worrisome because it would suggest they were conducting ... a series of tests that would allow them to create a much better arsenal."

Analysts and officials said a successful test would deal a body blow to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, already under pressure from Iran's nuclear programme.

"The government is extremely concerned about the prospects of a widening nuclear arms race in Asia, from West Asia to East Asia, while we have seen a reduction in other continents," Indonesia's government said in a statement.

India's foreign ministry said the test "highlights the dangers of clandestine proliferation". India and Pakistan conducted a series of unannounced nuclear tests in 1998.

Some analysts saw Pyongyang trying to extract diplomatic concessions at a fraught time for Washington.

"Pyongyang's assessment is that the United States is bogged down in Iraq, and then you have the Iran problem ... Having gone this far, it becomes more and more difficult to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear capability," said Joseph Cheng, foreign policy expert at City University of Hong Kong.

While a successful test would greatly complicate diplomacy, few saw it as leading to a shooting war on the Korean peninsula, the Cold War's last flashpoint where many of the 30,000 U.S. troops stationed in the South are in the line of fire from some 11,000 North Korean artillery pieces on the heavily armed border.

"North Korea places the utmost importance in the maintenance of the regime. North Korea must calculate to what extent to conduct this kind of brinksmanship," said Takahira Ogawa, Standard & Poor's director of sovereign ratings for Asia.

Albright also saw the test as a classic North Korean gambit.

"My own point of view and my own experience with the North Koreans ... is that they felt increasingly backed into a corner ... I don't think North Korea is trying (for) an escalation that could lead to a military confrontation."