(4th LD) UNSC adopts statement condemning N. Korea's rocket launch

(ATTN: ADDS White House spokesman's remarks in paras 6-8)
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, April 13 (Yonhap) -- The United Nations Security Council
Monday adopted a statement condemning North Korea's rocket launch last week and
calling for full implementation of existing sanctions under a previous
resolution.
The statement "condemns the April 5, 2009, launch by the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, which is in contravention of Security Council Resolution
1718," naming North Korea by its official name.
It also demands that North Korea refrain from any further ballistic missile
launches and return to the six-party talks, which are deadlocked over how to
verify its past and current nuclear activities.
The 15-member council adopted the statement unanimously within 10 minutes after a
full session convened at 3 p.m.
Emerging from the brief session, Mexican U.N. ambassador Claude Heller, the
rotating chairman of the Security Council this month, told reporters that the
statement, though not a legally binding resolution, "shows the unity of the
Security Council" in "a clear condemnation" of the North's rocket launch.
The White House welcomed the council's statement.
"The President welcomes today's clear and united message by the United Nations
Security Council condemning North Korea's recent launch of a Taepo-dong 2
missile, confirming that it violates international law and would result in real
consequences for North Korea," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a
statement.
"The international community is united in demanding that North Korea abandon its
pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, and that it
refrain from further provocations," Gibbs said.
The council's presidential statement was adopted eight days after North Korea
launched the rocket, claiming it had put a communications satellite into space.
The U.S. says it has not found any new satellite in space and denounces the
launch as a guise for a ballistic missile test.
Six major players of the Security Council, including five veto-wielding permanent
members and Japan, circulated a draft statement Saturday in a compromise between
the U.S. and its allies and North Korea's two closest friends, China and Russia.
China and Russia have opposed any effort by the U.S. and its allies to adopt a
legally binding resolution, siding with North Korea's claim that the April 5
rocket launch was part of a peaceful space program.
Some analysts say North Korea's rocket launch was aimed at consolidating North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il's power amid rumors of his failing health and the
possible nomination of his third and youngest son, Jong-un, as his successor in
another dynastic power transfer.
The rocket was launched just days before the new Supreme People's Assembly, North
Korea's parliament, reelected Kim Thursday, ending suspicions that his grip on
state affairs has been slipping after he reportedly suffered a stroke last
summer.
The statement also calls on a Security Council sanctions committee to come up
with a list of North Korean companies and goods by the end of this month so they
can be subjected to financial and arms sanctions under Resolution 1718.
The resolution, adopted after North Korea's ballistic and nuclear tests in 2006,
has not been implemented due to lack of proper implementation measures.
Controversy lingers, however, over whether the council's presidential statement
is legally binding despite the strong wording.
Denouncing the U.S. government for its failure to get a resolution, former U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton described a presidential statement as merely
"an opinion."
David Straub, associate director of Korean Studies at the Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, said that the presidential
statement is "the best that could be achieved, given the opposition of China and
Russia to a Security Council resolution and given the desire of all UNSC
permanent members and the Republic of Korea and Japan to preserve the six-party
talks."
Straub said he is pessimistic about the implementation of the statement.
"The language of the statement is strong, but, overall, the debate at the U.N.
Security Council underlined the limits of the UNSC and of the six-party talks in
dealing with the challenges posed by North Korea," he said. "The international
community did little to implement UNSC Resolutions 1695 and 1718 ... and there is
little reason to expect that the situation will be significantly different this
time."
Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia
Foundation, agreed.
"The resumption of a new international sanctions process may prove equally as
ineffective in deterring or punishing North Korea as those pursued following
North Korea's 2006 nuclear test," he said.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood disagreed.
"As far as we're concerned, it is binding," he said. "It'll be incumbent upon
Security Council members, other members of the international community, to do
what we need to do with regard to North Korea: use all of our tools available to
try to convince the North to come back to the table and continue the process of
denuclearization."
The spokesman said focus should be put on the content and not the form of the
council's reaction.
"Don't get hung up on the form of a particular response," Wood said. "The
important thing is that we deliver a very strong and coordinated response to
North Korea. I believe that that draft statement does do just that."
Wood urged North Korea not to repeat such a launch and to return to the six-party
talks.
"We want to do everything we can in getting a message to the North Koreans that
this type of activity cannot happen again, mustn't happen again," Wood said. "And
we're going to, again, continue to encourage the North to come back to the
six-party framework."
North Korea has threatened to scrap the six-party nuclear talks if the rocket
launch were brought to the Security Council, hinting at another nuclear test.
"Now the question becomes whether the North will reject the statement's appeal
for negotiations as it threatened in its March 26th statement -- an action likely
to further unify the world community and isolate the North -- or whether in fact
the six-party talks can utilize the existing international consensus as an
effective basis for pursuing real progress toward North Korea's
denuclearization," Snyder said.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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