Egypt renewed on Monday its calls for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to cease “violations of [UN Security] Council resolutions and refrain from any further provocations”, referring to the latest hydrogen bomb test.
During an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the North Korean test, Egypt’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta said that Egypt expresses its strong “commitment to dealing swiftly with any threat to the nuclear non-proliferation regime.”
He also called on all stakeholders to “work towards a solution to establish a lasting peace between the two Koreas, to break the ongoing vicious cycle of breaching Council resolutions and leading to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
During the meeting, several representatives called for imposing more sanctions, with the aim of “economically choking the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear programme.”
The American representative said that the US must adopt the “strongest possible measures.” Meanwhile, the French representative as the meeting called for more sanctions and more restrictive measures from the European Union.
On the other hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that further sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is “useless” while adding that the socialist country would rather “eat grass than give up their nuclear programme,” as reported by BBC. Putin added that a future conflict that uses nuclear weapons will lead to a disaster, calling on conflicting sides to reside to diplomacy.
The same opinion was shared by China which also called for more dialogue.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea successively tested a miniaturised hydrogen nuclear device, state-owned Korean news agency KCNA reported on Sunday.
The tests caused an international uproar, while the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea says the nuclear programme is used as a deterrent. The country’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Han Tae-song, told Reuters that the nuclear test is a “self-defence measures” and should be regarded as a message to the US, vowing that as long as provocations continue pressure will be applied.
On Monday, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said that Egypt is worried about the rising tensions in the Korean peninsula, which raises disputes in the region, calling upon the Korean government to abide by resolutions from the UN Security Council.
DPR Korea did several bomb and nuclear tests, with previous tests coming in 2006, 2009, and 2013. South Korea said it measured a 4.3-magnitude seismic event that it estimates occurred in the proximity of the North Korean nuclear facilities.
Amid calls to intensify sanctions on the Asian country, the international community has condemned the testing of the hydrogen bomb, which in comparison, was 11 times the size of its previous detonation in January 2016.
Pyongyang is already facing sanctions over its nuclear programme since its first nuclear test in 2006. Those sanctions may be expanded after the test is confirmed.
In 2015, North Korean ambassador to EgyptPak Chun Il defended his country’s nuclear experiments and said his country will never use this weapon, except as a deterrent weapon if any other country violated its sovereignty. He added that his country only used its own technology to develop and carry out this experiment. The alleged experiment means that the country reached a new level of owning nuclear weapons by developing a hydrogen bomb.
