North Korean nuclear blast generates international outrage
Updated
North Korea's latest nuclear test has met with global condemnation, including only a declaration from the UN Security Council that it was in "clear violation" of a 2006 resolution, passed after Pyongyang's first atomic test.
Presenter:Linda Mottram
Speakers: Barack Obama, US president; Stephen Smith, Australian foreign minister; Kazuo Kodama, Japan's Foreign ministry spokesman; Hassan Wirajuda, Indonesia's Foreign minister
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MOTTRAM: Incensed at global condemnation of its missile test last month, and always apparently mindful of the attention it gets by defying the international order, the reclusive regime in Pyongyang was expected to conduct another nuclear test, though perhaps not this soon. In many of the world's capitals, news of a seismic event measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale quickly drew out the words grave concern and most critically, China was quick to make its displeasure known.
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An official statement read on China TV said Beijing was resolutely opposed to the North Korean test, and urged North Korea to keep to their promise of denuclearisation, to stop actions that would make the situation worse and to return to the six-party denuclearisation talks.
Australia was quick to condemn North Korea's test as a flagrant breach of its international obligations under Security Council resolution 1718. The Foreign minister, Stephen Smith, had also pressed for China to act and, speaking in the Australian Parliament, he listed Australia's demands of North Korea.
SMITH: There is only one option for North Korea. It should immediately desist from all of these provocative acts, it should immediately comply with United Nations security council resolutions, in particular resolution 1718, and it should immediately resume the six-party talks.
MOTTRAM: Japan also declared the test to be in clear violation of UN resolutions and said it could not be allowed. A crisis room was set up in the Prime Minister's office in Tokyo. Japan's Foreign ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama spoke to journalists.
KODAMA: We are certainly going to respond in a very responsible manner. Definitely we are going to respond, we have to, at the UN Security Council.
MOTTRAM: And even as the security council was preparing yet another emergency meeting on the running sore of international politics that is North Korea, European nations voiced deep concern and issued condemnation, and so did another key player, the United States. U-S President, Barack Obama.
OBAMA: North Korea's actions endanger the people of northeast Asia. They are a blatant violation of international law and they contradict North Korea's own prior commitments. Now the United States and the international community must take action in response.
And elsewhere in Asia, a major meeting in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi suddenly found a new issue on its agenda. Representatives of 45 nations, including at least 30 foreign ministers, are attending the two-day Asia-Europe Meeting, known as ASEM. And where it was to have been discussing ways out of the current global financial and economic mess, the attention suddenly shifted.
Indonesia's Foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, voiced that meeting's alarm at the developments on the Korean Peninsula.
WIRAJUDA: Certainly, the nuclear test just conducted by the North Korean side has created new tensions in the northeast Asian regions, in the Korean peninsula, and which in turn would affect the peace and security in the Asia-Pacific regions as a whole.
MOTTRAM: In South Korea, investors took fright with the markets falling, and the country's massive military was put on high alert, while President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency security meeting.
The question is whether Pyongyang, which had been threatening to restart its nuclear program, presents a real threat or whether it's attention seeking .. in particular, testing U-S President Barack Obama's attempts to reach out to isolated regime's like North Korea's. There's also the ongoing matter of Pyongyang's political arrangements .. questions of accession which complicate assessments of what's really motivating the regime.
Meanwhile, reports on Russia's Itar-Tass newsagency quote a senior official at Pyongyang's Moscow embassy as saying that unless the United States ends its intimidation, more North Korean nuclear tests are likely.
