Washington – The Bush administration tried Wednesday to build international support for stronger measures, including sanctions, to persuade North Korea to abandon its weapons program after it fired a seventh missile into the Sea of Japan, but China and Russia resisted, saying they favored less punitive actions.
Late Wednesday, President Bush spoke with the leaders of South Korea and Japan and stressed the need for a unified response in the United Nations to the missile tests.
Bush thanked South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for their strong statements condemning the North’s launching of missiles, which the White House described as “provocative behavior.”
Bush spoke by telephone to Roh for about 13 minutes and to Koizumi for about eight minutes, a White House spokeswoman said.
“We will be forced to take all-out countermeasures if sanctions are exercised,” Han Song Ryol, deputy chief of North Korea’s U.N. mission, said Wednesday, according to Japanese broadcaster TBS.
Han said the missile tests Tuesday and Wednesday were part of a military drill, TBS reported.
The unsuccessful launching of a new missile called the Taepodong-2 on Tuesday in the face of repeated international warnings effectively scrapped a moratorium that North Korea has observed since 1998. A successful test of the longer-range missile would have represented a significant expansion of North Korea’s ability to make advanced weapons.
Bush administration officials minimized speculation that more tests might be on the way as American officials turned their attention to persuading China, and to a lesser extent Russia, to put pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
At the United Nations, Japan circulated a proposal for a Security Council resolution condemning the missile tests, urging North Korea to return immediately to talks on its nuclear program and threatening sanctions if it did not move to irreversibly dismantle the nuclear program.
China and Russia indicated that they would prefer a blander, nonbinding “presidential statement” from the council, with no threat of punishment against the already isolated North Korean government.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.