Japan warns against U.N. inaction on N Korea rocket launch

Japan warns against U.N. inaction on N Korea rocket launch
Japan Today, Wednesday 08th April, 06:30 AM JST

TOKYO — Japan’s foreign minister warned Tuesday that the U.N. Security Council must give a strong response to North Korea’s recent rocket launch or risk losing its authority.

Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said a failure to respond to the North’s Sunday launch could hurt multilateral talks aimed at getting the communist nation to halt its nuclear programs.

“If violations are allowed, the U.N. Security Council’s authority would be threatened and trust placed upon it would be impaired,” Nakasone told a news conference. “The U.N. Security Council should respond properly and teach North Korea a lesson that it has to pay for the act of provocation.”

He said the lack of a strong response to the rocket launch—seen by many as a cover for testing long-range missile technology—would send the wrong message to the North.

Security Council diplomats were mired in squabbles over how, or even whether, to punish North Korea for Sunday’s launch. World leaders, including President Barack Obama, called it a provocative act and a violation of previous sanctions, imposed after the North’s underground nuclear test in 2006.

Japan said Monday that while it was trying to lobby China and Russia, which are reluctant to punish the North, it would extend sanctions against North Korea for another year in response to the launch.

Japan imposed tight trade sanctions against the North in 2006 following Pyongyang’s missile and atomic tests that year. The ongoing sanctions, which ban North Korean ships from entering Japan and prohibit imports of North Korean goods, have been renewed every six months since and were to expire on April 13.

Pyongyang continued to claim it put a communications satellite into orbit and is now transmitting data and patriotic songs. But Japan joined the rest of the world in saying that it appeared to be a failure.

Nakasone said Japan has yet to determine whether North Korea launched a satellite or a missile, but either way the launch violated the Security Council ban because it used missile technology.

The international community will allow North Korea to engage in space development “only if the North fulfilled its obligation to abandon all nuclear programs and no longer poses a threat to Japan and the rest of the world,” he said.