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| ▲ Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in Gaza, at U.N. headquarters in New York on Oct. 16, 2024 in this photo, released by Reuters. (Yonhap) |
UNSC-N Korea-ICBM
U.N. Security Council to convene meeting on N. Korea's latest ICBM launch next week
By Song Sang-ho
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (Yonhap) -- The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) will convene a meeting on North Korea's recent launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) next week, Britain's top envoy to the U.N. said Friday.
Ambassador Barbara Woodward of Britain, the rotating UNSC president this month, said that the meeting will take place on Monday, after Pyongyang claimed to have successfully test-fired a Hwasong-19 ICBM on Thursday.
"It is scheduled for Monday, and for obvious reasons. This was an ICBM launch on an unprecedented scale, and with all of the implications for regional and international security that we've have seen before," she said.
"So we've moved very quickly to put that in the schedule," she added.
Woodward expressed concerns over growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, including the North's troop deployment to Russia.
"We've known for a while that the North Koreans were supplying military hardware to the Russians, but 10,000 troops who were just going into the Ukrainian front lines to be used as cannon fodder by the Russians," she said.
"We did our best earlier in the week to discuss it and of course, we are coming back to North Korea's ballistic missile launch on Monday. So we've got very much... the situation in our cross hairs."
The North's ICBM launch, the first in almost a year, came days before the U.S. presidential election. Speculation has persisted that Pyongyang could engage in such provocative acts to underscore its military presence and bolster its leverage ahead of the U.S. election.
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