The United States has called for an emergency public meeting of the UN Security Council on North Korea after its latest ballistic missile strikes, to be held on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. GMT, we learned on Monday 9 May from diplomatic sources.
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The meeting will take place amid US fears that North Korea will resume nuclear testing in the coming weeks. Washington, current president of the Security Council in May, had been thinking since the end of last week of holding a session on the latest shootings organized by Pyongyang, according to the same sources. No comment could be immediately obtained from the US diplomatic mission to the UN.
Fifteen test shots since January
Despite harsh international sanctions, North Korea has stepped up efforts in recent months to modernize its military, and has carried out 15 test launches since January. His last experiment was the firing of a sea-to-ground ballistic missile on Saturday. On Friday, Washington had warned that Pyongyang “was preparing the Punggye-ri test site and could be ready to conduct a test there as early as this month, which would be its seventh test” nuclear.
Negotiations to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons and halt his ballistic weapons program came to nothing. The imposition in 2017 of several rounds of international economic sanctions by the UN against Pyongyang did not relent the regime. In April, the United States submitted to its 14 UN Security Council partners a draft resolution further increasing sanctions against Pyongyang. The text, obtained by AFP, plans to cut from four million to two million barrels the amount of crude oil that North Korea would be allowed to import each year for civilian purposes, and would impose restrictions on new exports north -Koreans, including mineral fuels and clocks.
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Diplomats say China and Russia, which hold vetoes in the council and have long proposed a resolution easing sanctions on North Korea instead, have so far refused to discuss the contents of the draft . The latter has not been put to the vote to date. Washington promisedto go aheadthis month about it, but no date for a vote has yet been set, diplomats say.
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