North Korea tested a “newly developed” anti-aircraft missile on Thursday, hours before an emergency Security Council meeting requested by Washington, Paris and London over its previous firing.
“The People’s Republic of North Korea carried out on September 30 a test firing of an anti-aircraft missile that it had recently developed,” the North Korean agency KCNA announced on Friday.
“The remarkable combat performance” of the missile “has been verified, with the introduction of new key technologies,” said the official agency.
A photo of the missile was published in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
This new fire has the air of provocation, in the run-up to the Security Council meeting expected on Friday, to discuss precisely the previous missile fire by Pyongyang, presented as hypersonic by the North Koreans.
The emergency meeting was scheduled to be held on Thursday, but it was postponed until Friday following a request from China and Russia.
In 2017, at the initiative of the administration of Donald Trump, the Security Council had adopted heavy economic sanctions against Pyongyang after a nuclear test and missile tests.
Since the administration of Joe Biden took office, it has returned to France, a little isolated, to take the front line to demand a closed meeting of the Security Council when Pyongyang carried out a missile test.
On Monday, shortly after North Korea’s missile launch, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Song, told the annual UN General Assembly that his country had a “right legitimate ”to test weapons and“ strengthen [ses] defense capabilities ”.
But for the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken, on the contrary, North Korea favors “instability and insecurity”.
“Repeated violations”
“We are concerned about these repeated violations of Security Council resolutions [de l’ONU] that promote instability and insecurity, ”the secretary of state told reporters on the sidelines of discussions in Pittsburgh.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rejected the United States’ offer of dialogue earlier Thursday, accusing President Joe Biden of continuing the “hostile acts” of his predecessors, which Washington immediately denied.
The United States is currently unable to confirm whether the North Korean missile was hypersonic, which would constitute a major technological advance, as hypersonic missiles are capable of reaching speeds at least five times the speed of the his.
“We are in the process of evaluating and analyzing the shots,” detailed the US Secretary of State, “to understand exactly what they did, the technology they used”.
With this new shooting Thursday, Pyongyang seeks to bulge the torso and to “exist on the international scene”, analyzes the researcher Ahn Chan-il, former North Korean defector.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in recently reiterated his calls for a formal declaration of an end to the Korean War – hostilities ceased in 1953 with a simple armistice rather than a formal peace treaty.
With its repeated shots, Pyongyang seeks “to buy time and tries to make the best possible use of both Seoul’s proposal to declare the end of the war and Washington’s offer to speak without preconditions,” assures Ahn Chan-il.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said it is ready to resume talks without preconditions, as North Korea calls for an end to sweeping sanctions.
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Reference-feedproxy.google.com