Gamiaw worldNews: US calls for swift UN condemnation of North Korea launches

South Koreans watch a TV news program with a file footage about North Korea's rocket launch plans, at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016. South Korea warned on Wednesday of "searing" consequences if North Korea doesn't abandon plans to launch a long-range rocket that critics call a banned test of ballistic missile technology. The headline on the screen reads "North Korea plans to launch a missile." AP/Ahn Young-joon

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting late Wednesday on North Korea's launch of two ballistic missiles and U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power called for "urgent and united condemnation."

The United States and Japan, after consulting South Korea, requested a closed-door briefing from the U.N. Secretariat on the North's reported firing of the two midrange missiles. One flew about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) high after five failed attempts in recent months.

Power told reporters as she headed into the council meeting that North Korea's repeated defiance of international law "underscores how important it is for us to come together to ensure consequences for this inherently destabilizing behavior, and this inherent and consistent and repeated threat to international peace and security."

The Security Council, which has imposed five rounds of sanctions on the North, strongly condemned three previous missile launches on June 1, calling them "a grave violation" of a ban on all ballistic missile activity that contributed to the country's nuclear weapons program.

The latest sanctions imposed by the council on March 2 were the toughest on North Korea in two decades, reflecting growing anger at what Pyongyang claims was its first hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6 and a subsequent rocket launch in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity.

The sanctions include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang; and expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in "illicit activities."

Power said united condemnation from the U.N.'s most powerful body is a first step "but we're again looking to ensure accountability — looking to identify again individuals, entities who may be responsible for this repeated series of tests that pose such a threat to international peace and security."
Those individuals and entities would be added to the sanctions blacklist.

A spokesman for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the launch "a brazen and irresponsible act," and "a deliberate and very grave violation of its international obligations."

"The DPRK must change its course for a denuclearized Korean peninsula," Farhan Haq said, using the initials of the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
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Associated Press writer Michael Astor contributed to this report from the United Nations, also Edith Lederer from PhilStar