North Korea to lead UN nuclear disarmament conference
Nuclear-armed North Korea, which fired two ballistic missiles into the sea on Thursday, will lead the UN Conference on Disarmament later this year.
The United Nations said the rogue state, which has carried out six missile launches this year, would assume the presidency of the conference for one month from May 30.
It is one of six countries to take on the four-week role in alphabetical order, along with China, Colombia, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ecuador.
UN Watch, a NGO based in Geneva, said the US and European ambassadors should walk out of the conference, which has 65 member states and focuses on nuclear disarmament, when North Korea takes the helm.
“This is a country that threatens to attack other UN member states with missiles, and that commits atrocities against its own people,' Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said.
Canada boycotted the event the last time North Korea assumed the presidency of the conference in 2011.
North Korea said on Friday its two latest rounds of weapons tests this week were successful while vowing to bolster its nuclear "war deterrent" and speed up the development of more powerful warheads.
It appeared North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un did not attend the tests on Tuesday and Thursday, which were detected by the militaries of neighbors South Korea and Japan.
But Kim did inspect a munitions factory where workers pledged loyalty to their leader, who "smashes with his bold pluck the challenges of US imperialists and their vassal forces," state media saidz
North Korea has been ramping up its testing activity in recent months, including six rounds of weapons launches so far in 2022, demonstrating its military might amid pandemic-related difficulties and a prolonged freeze in nuclear diplomacy with the United States.
The US Indo Pacific Command said the latest launches, while highlighting the destabilising impact of North Korea's weapons program, didn't pose an "immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies."
South Korea said the weapons, which were likely short-range, were launched five minutes apart from the eastern coastal town of Hamhung and flew 118 miles on an apogee of 12.4 miles before landing in the sea.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the North's repeated missile firings were "extremely regrettable" and violated UN Security Council resolutions.
In early January, North Korea carried out two test-firings of a purported hypersonic missile, which the dictator described as a boost to his nuclear "war deterrent".
North Korea also this month test-fired two different types of short-range ballistic missiles that are designed to evade missile defence systems.
The North last week threatened to resume the testing of nuclear explosives and long-range missiles targeting the US, which was suspended in 2018 during talks with then-President Donald Trump.
North Korea has not launched intercontinental ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons since 2017.
Those efforts were derailed in 2019 after the Americans rejected North Korea's demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
The Biden administration has offered open-ended talks but showed no willingness to ease sanctions unless Mr Jong-Un takes real steps to abandon the nuclear weapons and missiles he sees as his strongest guarantee of survival.
Experts say the flurry of tests is an attempt by Kim Jong-Un to force President Joe Biden to the negotiating table over US-led sanctions against the pariah nation for its nuclear program.
The pandemic has further shaken the North's economy, which was already battered by decades of mismanagement and the sanctions.