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UN Security Council to convene meeting on North's latest ICBM launch next week

Published: 02 Nov. 2024, 11:19 Updated: 03 Nov. 2024, 14:03

Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations, Barbara Woodward, speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in Gaza at UN headquarters in New York on Oct. 16, 2024, in this photo released by Reuters. [YONHAP]

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will convene a meeting on North Korea's recent launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) next week, Britain's top envoy to the United Nations said Friday.

Ambassador Barbara Woodward of Britain, the rotating UNSC president this month, said that the meeting will take place on Monday after Pyongyang claimed to have successfully test-fired a Hwasong-19 ICBM on Thursday.

"This was an ICBM launch on an unprecedented scale, and with all of the implications for regional and international security that we have seen before," she said, "so we've moved very quickly to put that in the schedule."

Woodward also expressed concerns over growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, including the North's troop deployment to Russia.

"We've known for a while that the North Koreans were supplying military hardware to the Russians, but 10,000 troops who were just going into the Ukrainian front lines to be used as cannon fodder by the Russians," she said. "We did our best earlier in the week to discuss it, and of course, we are coming back to North Korea's ballistic missile launch on Monday. So we've got very much the situation in our crosshairs."

The North's ICBM launch, the first in almost a year, came days before the U.S. presidential election. Speculation has persisted that Pyongyang could engage in such provocative acts to underscore its military presence and bolster its leverage ahead of the U.S. election.

Yonhap