The U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously approved new sanctions on North Korea to punish it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test, hours after Pyongyang threatened a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike against the United States.
North Korea on Friday scrapped all nonaggression pacts with South Korea and cut off a hotline with Seoul after the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions on Pyongyang to punish it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test.
The United States and China called Tuesday for tougher U.N. sanctions to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear missile test, as the secretive Stalinist state threatened to scrap the 1953 truce that halted the Korean War.
Syria's president threatened a regional war if the West intervenes in his country's uprising.
On March 26, the South Korean corvette Cheonan was sunk in the Yellow Sea with the loss of 46 lives. Six weeks later, an investigation conducted by South Korean, Australian, Swedish, Canadian, British and American experts determined that the warship had been hit by a North Korean torpedo, parts of which were found near the wreck. Both Seoul and Washington promised there would be a serious response to the attack. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton proclaimed that there "will not be and cannot be business as usual." Yet all the allies did was refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council.
"The top priority now is to defuse the tensions, bring down heat bring the situation back on the track of diplomacy, on negotiations," he added, while calling for a resumption of stalled six-nation talks aimed at removing nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea cuts off hotline, pact with South; Kim responds to U.N. resolution →
New U.N. sanctions also will prompt North Korea to act sooner on a threat, made following the nuclear test, to use "powerful second and third countermeasures," he added.
North Korea cuts off hotline, pact with South; Kim responds to U.N. resolution →
