The United Nations Security Council has strongly condemned North Korea's latest rocket launch and promised to take punitive steps, while Washington vowed to ensure the 15-nation body imposed 'serious consequences' on Pyongyang as soon as possible.
'The members of the Security Council strongly condemned this launch,' Venezuelan Ambassador Rafael Dario Ramirez Carreno, president of the council this month, told reporters on Sunday.
He said the launch was 'a serious violation'.
North Korea has said it will continue to launch more long-range rockets after sending what it claims was a satellite into space.
After an emergency meeting the UN Security Council 'restated their intent to develop significant measures in a new resolution in response to the nuclear test' in January, as well as Sunday's rocket launch. He said they would work 'expeditiously'.
Standing alongside her Japanese and South Korean counterparts, US Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters: 'We will ensure that the Security Council imposes serious consequences. DPRK's (North Korea) latest transgressions require our response to be even firmer.'
The United States and China began discussing a resolution to expand existing UN sanctions after Pyongyang's January 6 atom bomb test.
More details with the political commentator Jung Sik Seo.
