North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told front-line troops the military is ready for “all-out war” against its enemies as the hermit nation nullified its nonaggression patch with the South.
The North also closed liaison channels with South Korea and the United States.
China, meanwhile, is appealing for calm and urging both sides to avoid escalating the already-tense situation in the Korean peninsula.
China’s appeal comes after the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved tougher sanctions on North Korea for a forbidden nuclear test, hours after the totalitarian state threatened a preemptive atomic strike on the U.S. and other “aggressors.”
The UN body Thursday voted 15-0, with no debate, to adopt a resolution drafted by the U.S. and China in the aftermath of the Feb. 12 underground blast.
“Our warnings were not heeded,” said Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who holds the council’s rotating presidency. “Now the choice is for the DPRK to make,” he said, referring to the country by its official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “Now other interested parties must behave responsibly,” he added.
The new sanctions target “illicit activity” by North Korean diplomats, bulk transfers of cash, and banks and companies funnelling funds or materials to support the country’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. Previous measures have failed to deter the impoverished regime from pursuing its atomic weapon ambitions.
“An extremely dangerous situation is prevailing on the Korean Peninsula where a nuclear war may break out right now,” the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, North Korea’s propaganda arm, said in a KCNA statement.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, yesterday said that if North Korea conducts another nuclear test, the Security Council would “take further significant measures.”
The tightened sanctions may lead to provocation from North Korea, Bank of Korea senior deputy governor Park Won Shik said at an emergency meeting in Seoul today.
The Chinese are also clearly worried that a nuclear-armed North Korea
could provoke an incident that would send millions of people flooding
across its 1400-kilometre border, according to Orville Schell, director
of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.“You don’t want to draw too much from it, but it suggests this new leadership wants to do exactly what Xi Jinping said it did want to do: establish a new and better relationship with the U.S.,” he added.
The resolution includes bans on equipment used to make chemical and nuclear weapons, front companies for the country’s weapons programs and importation of yachts, racing cars and jewelry for the regime’s elite. It also obliges UN member-states to stop any North Korean ships or planes suspected of carrying supplies for weapons programs.
The White House says the U.S. is fully capable of defending itself after a North Korean ballistic missile attack.
White House spokesman Jay Carney was responding to the North’s vow to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the U.S. That threat came in retaliation for tough new U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test.
Carney says the sanctions further isolate North Korea and show its leaders what will happen if they defy the international community. He says the breadth and severity of the sanctions show the world takes seriously the threat of North Korea’s nuclear program.
North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs but isn’t thought to have the ability to produce a warhead that could be used on a missile capable of reaching the U.S.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously Thursday for tough new sanctions to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test, and a furious Pyongyang threatened a nuclear strike against the United States.
The sanctions drafted by North Korea’s closest ally, China, and the United States send a powerful message that the international community condemns Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and nuclear tests – and repeated violations of Security Council resolutions.
“Adoption of the resolution itself is not enough,” China’s UN Ambassador Li Baodong said. “We want to see full implementation of the resolution.” Li also urged calm and a resumption of the stalled six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.
“The top priority now is to defuse the tensions, bring down heat … bring the situation back on the track of diplomacy, on negotiations,” Li said.
Immediately before the vote, an unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for “a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors” because Washington is “set to light a fuse for a nuclear war.”
The statement was carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, which issued no immediate comment after the Security Council vote.
