North Korea slams Europeans over criticism of missile test

SEOUL: North Korea on Thursday slammed a statement by European UN Security Council members urging strict enforcement of sanctions against Pyongyang for its latest missile test, calling the move a “serious provocation”.

Pyongyang fired a sea-launched missile on October 2 in the latest — and most provocative — of a series of weapons tests, just days before long-stalled US-North Korean nuclear talks were to resume in Sweden.

The North then walked away from the Stockholm talks on Saturday saying it was disappointed at the lack of “new and creative” solutions offered by Washington, although the United States said it was willing to meet again in two weeks.

In their statement at the UN Tuesday, the Europeans — France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Britain and Estonia — condemned Pyongyang´s tests and urged it to engage in “good faith in meaningful negotiations with the United States.”

The North on Thursday accused the Europeans of double standards.“The UNSC which champions fairness and equity picks fault with the just measure belonging to our right to self-defence, while keeping mum about the test-fire of Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile recently conducted by the US. This is a serious provocation against the DPRK,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

DPRK are the initials for North Korea´s official name. Washington has spent decades and billions of dollars developing technologies to try to stop an incoming ballistic missile, and said last week that it had tested an unarmed Minuteman III ICBM. “But there is a limit to the patience of the DPRK and there is no guarantee that all our patience would continue indefinitely,” the North Korean spokesperson added in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. Pyongyang declared a moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests at the end of 2017, saying it had completed the development of the deterrent, which it says it needs to defend against a possible US invasion.