SEOUL – North Korea today slammed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for holding an emergency meeting over the country’s latest missile tests, accusing the member states of toying with a “time-bomb”.
Pyongyang said Friday it had successfully fired an anti-aircraft missile, the latest in a series of tension-raising steps by the nuclear-armed state, which had until recently been biding its time since the change in United States administration in January.
Last month, it launched what it said was a long-range cruise missile, and earlier this week tested what it described as a hypersonic gliding vehicle, which South Korea’s military said appears to be in the early stages of development.
The tests prompted UNSC member states to convene an emergency meeting on North Korea on Friday, called by the US, Britain and France.
The meeting was originally due to take place on Thursday but was delayed. It lasted just over an hour and ended without a statement.
But it nonetheless angered Pyongyang, which called it a “wanton encroachment” on its sovereignty and a “serious intolerable provocation”.
“Demanding that we renounce our right to self-defence means an expression of its intention not to acknowledge the DPRK as a sovereign state,” said Jo Chol-su, director of the Foreign Ministry’s International Organisations Department, using the abbreviation for the country’s official name.
“I express strong concerns over the fact that the UNSC amused itself with the dangerous ‘time-bomb’ this time,” he added in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
North Korea has a long history of using weapons tests as part of a carefully calibrated process to try to forward its objectives.
On Wednesday, the country’s leader Kim Jong-un decried Washington’s repeated offers of talks without preconditions as a “petty trick”, accusing the Biden administration of continuing the “hostile policy” of its predecessors.
Under President Joe Biden, the US has repeatedly declared its willingness to meet North Korean representatives, while saying it will seek denuclearisation. – AFP, October 3, 2021
