North Korea Rocket Launch Update: UN Security Council Condemns Pyongyang, Considers Sanctions

The U.N. Security Council voted in an emergency session Sunday to condemn North Korea for its latest missile launch and said new sanctions would be imposed.

The Security Council called North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket Sunday and several earlier launches “dangerous and serious violations” of international law.

“The members of the Security Council strongly condemned this launch,” Venezuelan Ambassador Rafael Dario Ramirez Carreno, president of the council this month, told reporters.

The statement had the backing of China, the North’s main ally, and the other 14 members of the body, Agence France-Presse reported.

North Korea said it fired a long-range rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite. U.S. officials confirmed the launch and said the type of rocket used could fire a nuclear warhead.

French U.N. Ambassador François Delattre described North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket as an “outrageous provocation” before the session, Reuters reported.

China and the U.S. this week were expected to continue bilateral discussions on a new resolution to expand sanctions against Pyongyang with an eye toward a vote later this month.

Reuters quoted one diplomat as saying Washington hopes to tighten international restrictions on North Korea's banking system.

“There will eventually be a sanctions resolution,” the diplomat said. “China wants any steps to be measured but it wants the council to send a clear message to DPRK [North Korea] that it must comply with council resolutions.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean, called the rocket launch “deplorable” while NATO head Jens Stoltenberg called the action “a direct violation” of five U.N. Security Council resolutions.