Does anyone see the irony of a rogue nation with nuclear weapons testing a long-range missile that prompted President Obama to run to the United Nations pleading for it to do something... while at the same time saying we should make the world safer by disarming ourselves???
‘N.Korea broke the rules once again’
UN in emergency session as Obama condemns launch
By PAUL ALEXANDER and JOHN HEILPRIN
ASSOCIATED PRESSUNITED NATIONS — The United States and its allies sought punishment Sunday for North Korea’s defiant launch of a rocket that apparently fizzled into the Pacific, holding an emergency United Nations meeting in response to the “provocative act” that some say was likely a long-range missile test.
President Barack Obama, faced with his first global security crisis, called for an international response. Minutes after the rocket’s liftoff, Japan requested the emergency UN Security Council session in New York.
U.S. and South Korean officials claim the entire rocket, including whatever payload it carried, ended up in the ocean but many world leaders fear the launch indicates the capacity to fire a long-range missile. North Korea said it launched an experimental communications satellite into orbit Sunday and that it is transmitting data and patriotic songs.
“North Korea broke the rules, once again, by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles,” Obama said in Prague, Czech Republic. “It creates instability in their region, around the world. This provocation underscores the need for action.”
Council members met for three hours, seeking above all a unified response, but broke up for the night without issuing even a customary preliminary statement of condemnation. Diplomats privy to the closeddoor talks said China, Russia, Libya and Vietnam were concerned about further alienating and destabilizing North Korea.
Diplomats continued bilateral talks into the evening.
The United States, Britain, France and Japan drafted a proposal for a resolution that could be adopted by the end of the week. It is aimed at toughening existing economic sanctions by “naming and shaming” individuals and entities, council diplomats said.
Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, the council’s president, said the council would reconvene “as soon as possible” today to reach consensus on what to do about North Korea.
A ‘yes, we can’ on no to nukes
Declaring the future of mankind at stake, President Barack Obama said Sunday in Prague, Czech Republic, that all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms and that the United States had a moral responsibility to lead because no other country has used one.A North Korean rocket launch upstaged Obama’s idealistic call to action. But Obama dismissed those who say the spread of nuclear weapons, “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War,” cannot be checked. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime,” he told a crowd of more than 20,000. We “must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, ‘Yes, we can.’ ” Obama embraced the step of cutting the world arsenal as his first goal.
But he said his own country, with its huge arsenal and its history of using two atomic bombs against Japan in 1945, had to lead the world and start taking steps now.
-- ASSOCIATED PRESS
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