North Korea accuses UNSC of double standards

SEOUL: Nuclear-armed North Korea accused the UN Security Council of double standards on Monday ahead of a meeting on its latest missile test.

Pyongyang last week launched two weapons assessed by the US and others to be short-range ballistic missiles, which it is banned from under Security Council resolutions. It was the first substantive provocation since the new US administration of President Joe Biden took office, which is in the final stages of a review on policy towards the North.

Biden warned the isolated state that "there will be responses if they choose to escalate", while European members of the Security Council requested an urgent meeting Tuesday to discuss the launch. In a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency, senior foreign ministry official Jo Chol Su said the test was of a new "tactical guided missile".

"Many other countries across the globe are firing all kinds of projectiles," he said, warning that a "double standard" by the Security Council will "only cause an aggravation" on the Korean peninsula. The nuclear-armed North has a long history of using weapons tests to ramp up tensions, in a carefully calibrated process to try to forward its objectives. It is under multiple sets of international sanctions for its banned weapons programmes.