North Korean defiance likely to continue

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By Christina Bellantoni and Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Obama, other world leaders and the U.N. Security Council strongly condemned North Korea's nuclear test Monday, while experts who have studied the isolated state for years warned that the U.S. has few options and that more provocation likely lies ahead.

"North Korea's programs pose a grave threat to the peace and security of the world," Mr. Obama said Monday, hours after the communist nation followed its nuclear test by firing three medium-range missiles. "North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and illegal weapons."

The president said the international community "must take action in response," while other leaders in nations in the six-party talks - Russia, China, South Korea and Japan - issued similar condemnations.

On Tuesday, South Korea said it will join the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, which began in 2003 to deter states such as North Korea and Iran from trade in missile and nuclear technology, the Associated Press reported. South Korea planned to join the program after the North's April 9 rocket launch, but delayed the announcement after a surprise offer of a dialogue by the North.

North Korea has warned that it would consider the South's full participation in the program as a declaration of war.

In New York on Monday, the U.N. Security Council convened in an emergency session in which all 15 members demanded that Pyongyang adhere to previous council resolutions to dismantle its nuclear program.

"What we heard today was swift, clear, unequivocal condemnation" of the test, said Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "The U.S. thinks this is a grave violation of international law and a threat to the region and international peace and security."

Analysts, however, said little can be done because North Korea has violated multiple promises to freeze or halt its production of nuclear weapons going back to the Clinton administration.

The U.N. Security Council was expected to add sanctions, but North Korea has been penalized to the point that few options remain.

"There isn't really a good solution here. Pressure from the U.S. isn't going to go anywhere," said Scott Bruce, director of U.S. operations at the Nautilus Institute, housed at the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. "This is the beginning of a long series of very negative things, not the end of them."