Bush: North Korea has defied international community

Facing the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea, US President George Bush is calling the regime’s claim of a nuclear test a provocative act and has warned Pyongyang against exporting nuclear material.

“Once again, North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond,” Mr Bush said.

Other world leaders joined him in calling for an immediate and harsh rebuke from the United Nations against North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who wants to join the club of nuclear-armed nations.

US Ambassador John Bolton, scheduled to meet with the UN Security Council today, cast the stand-off with Pyongyang as one “between North Korea and the rest of the world” that will result in sanctions or more if the rogue nation does not restart talks with the international community.

“I think that North Korea has had a successful history of intimidating other countries,” Mr Bolton said on US TV.

“They’re not going to be successful with us,” he added.

Mr Bush has made national security a key issue in the mid-term congressional elections, and Democrats said North Korea’s success in raising the stakes in the nuclear stand-off was evidence that Bush’s policy was flawed.

The president called the leaders of South Korea, Russia, Japan and China and said they all reaffirmed a commitment to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

At the United Nations, the US-proposed stringent sanctions included a trade ban on military and luxury items, the power to inspect all cargo entering or leaving North Korea and freezing assets connected with its weapons programmes.

While worried that North Korea could use a nuclear weapon offensively, the US also has misgivings that it will sell nuclear material or weapons to others. North Korea is believed to have enough plutonium for as few as four and as many as a dozen nuclear bombs.

Mr Bush said North Korea already is one of the world’s leading proliferators of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria.

“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the US,” Mr Bush said in a brief statement in the diplomatic reception room at the White House.

“And we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.”

North Korea has been a major security problem for successive US administrations. In 2002 the Bush administration accused the North of reneging on a 1994 nuclear freeze agreement by secretly undertaking a uranium-enrichment programme.

That agreement became inoperative and in the ensuing months a defiant North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ended the nuclear freeze.

In 2003, the US joined China, South Korea, Japan and Russia in an effort to negotiate the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme in exchange for economic concessions.

There have been no negotiations since November 2005 because of what Pyongyang describes as hostile US policies, sanctions against North Korea for the alleged counterfeiting of US currency and other misdeeds.

US assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill said a tough UN resolution would help protect the US from the potential spread of nuclear technology and make it harder for North Korea to get the finances needed to fund a nuclear programme.

“What the North Koreans have in mind is that if they go ahead and test, we may be angry now, but at some point we’ll get over it, and we’ll deal with them as a nuclear weapons state,” Mr Hill, the chief US envoy to the North Korea nuclear talks, said in a television interview.

“We’re not going to deal with them as a nuclear weapons state. I don’t think China will deal with them.

"I don’t think any of their neighbours will deal with them.”

Democrats condemned North Korea’s actions and cited the reported test as evidence that Mr Bush’s foreign policy strategy is ineffective.

They point to six-party talks with the US, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea that have stalled and so far failed to quell North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who served in President Bill Clinton’s administration and has visited North Korea, said today that the Bush administration should abandon its long-standing refusal to engage in direct talks with North Korea.

“I would engage directly in face-to-face talks,” Mr Richardson said. “That’s when you deliver your toughest message.”

Senate minority leader Harry Reid said the Bush administration has for several years been in a state of denial about the growing challenge of North Korea and has tried to play down the issue.