N.Korea conducts nuclear tests: Security Council to meet

May 25, 2009

N.Korea conducts nuclear tests

Security Council to meet

		The meeting was requested by Japan's UN Ambassador Yukio Takasu following a North Korean claim that it had conducted a nuclear test. --PHOTO: AP

UNITED NATIONS - THE UN Security Council will meet on Monday to discuss North Korea's claim of a nuclear test, the Japanese UN mission said.

'The time of the urgent meeting is planned tomorrow afternoon,' the mission said in a statement released late on Sunday in New York.

The meeting was requested by Japan's UN Ambassador Yukio Takasu following a North Korean claim that it had conducted a nuclear test.

Pyongyang said it staged a successful underground nuclear test which was more powerful than its previous test in 2006, followed later by an apparent short-range missile launch.

'It is absolutely unacceptable,' said Japan's top government spokesman Takeo Kawamura, as Prime Minister Taro Aso set up a special crisis task force. 'Japan will take stern action against North Korea.'

Added Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone in Hanoi after meeting South Korean counterpart Yu Myung Hwan. 'It is an act that we can never tolerate... We, as the only atomic-bombed nation, need to take stern action.'

Japan quickly asked UN Security Council chair Russia to open an emergency meeting, and the Japanese UN mission said later a meeting had been scheduled for Monday afternoon local time in New York.

In Vienna, a UN-backed international committee preparing a nuclear test ban treaty said on Monday that North Korea's announcement that it carried out a nuclear test should be 'universally condemned'.

'Today's nuclear test claimed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) constitutes a threat to international peace and security and to the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime,' Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the preparatory committee for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation said in a statement.

'I am gravely concerned by this action. In particular, it is a serious violation of the norm established by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and as such deserves universal condemnation.'

The CTBT has been signed by 180 countries, but to come into effect it still needs ratification by nine key holdouts including China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and the United States. -- AFP

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