No Security Council agreement on NKorea launch

The United States and its allies failed to get the UN Security Council to agree on immediate punishment for North Korea's rocket launch, which reportedly fizzled out in the Pacific Ocean.

The Security Councilheld an emergency meeting Sunday after Pyongyang fired a long-range rocket over Japan, which the United States said was actually a ballistic missile, but the session ended without agreement.

"We are now in a very sensitive moment," said ambassador Zhang Yesui of China, the main ally of the secretive North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il.

"Our position is that the council's reaction has to be cautious and proportionate," he said after the three-hour closed-door talks of the 15-nation council. Further negotiations were set for Monday.

Diplomats said China and Russia had urged restraint in order not to jeopardise the long-running six-nation nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea, which has tested two rockets and an atom bomb since the talks began.

The North defied weeks of international pressure Sunday, launching what it said was a satellite that had been successfully put into orbit, transmitting data and patriotic songs praising Kim.

The United States and South Korea said the payload launch failed. The second and third stages of the rocket were believed to have fallen into the Pacific Ocean about 1,300 kilometres 800 miles east of Japan.

Whether there was a satellite on board or not, Washington and its allies have repeatedly said the real concern was the delivery system -- the rocket itself.

The United States said the North had actually fired a Taepodong-2, the country's longest-range missile, which at maximum range could theoretically reach US territory in Alaska and Hawaii.

It said the launch violated Resolution 1718, which was passed by the UN Security Council in 2006 after the North tested a missile and a nuclear weapon and which bars the country from further missile-related work.

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished," US President Barack Obama said. "North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons."

Some analysts say the North Korean regime is using the affair to seize the attention of Obama's new administration, possibly to extract concessions, before agreeing to resume the six-party disarmament talks.

The possibility that the launch could lead to an indefinite breakdown in the six-party process is deeply worrying from a proliferation standpoint, said Daniel Pinkston, a senior analyst in Seoul with the International Crisis Group.

"One of the things we are concerned about is an over-reaction that could exacerbate the situation and set the talks back even more," he said. The talks group the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States.

Before the launch, Japan had taken the rare step of authorising its military in advance to shoot down any part of the rocket that threatened to hit its territory -- something North Korea said would be seen as an act of war.

The United States and North Korea have decades of hostility between them, dating back to the 1950-1953 Korean war which ended without a peace treaty, and Pyongyang's regime has often worried its neighbours.

Analysts said the Security Council was not likely to toughen sanctions on North Korea, but a Japanese official said Tokyo would Friday decide on new bilateral sanctions against the North.

"North Korea's reckless act that threatens regional and global security cannot be justified under any circumstances," he said.





A sea lion swims near the Palomino islands. REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil

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