North Korea announces a successful nuclear test

Yesterday Shinzo, Abe, the Japanese PM and Hu Jintao, Chinese president, declared that a North Korean nuclear test “cannot be tolerated” and that Pyongyang should return unconditionally to negotiations on its nuclear programme.

A few hours later, however, North Korea reported that it had performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully "with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 per cent," and that no radiation leaked from that test site.

"It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the (Korean People's Army) and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability," KCNA said. "It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."

An official at South Korea's seismic monitoring center confirmed that a magnitude 3.6 tremor felt at the time of alleged North Korea nuclear test wasn't a natural occurrence. The U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a seismic event with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2 in northeastern North Korea that coincided with the country's announced nuclear test. The Colorado-based agency was unable to tell whether the event was the result of an atomic explosion or a natural earthquake, USGS official Bruce Presgrave said. "At this magnitude, we can't tell whether it's a small earthquake or something else, like an explosion," Presgrave said.

China, the North's closest ally, said Beijing "resolutely opposes" the North Korean nuclear test and hopes Pyongyang will return to disarmament talks. The U.N. Security Council was expected to discuss the reported North Korean test Monday, and the United States and Japan are likely to press for a resolution imposing additional sanctions on Pyongyang. The council last week issued a statement condemning plans for a test.

The North is believed to have enough radioactive material for about a half-dozen bombs, using plutonium from its main nuclear reactor located at Yongbyon, north of the capital Pyongyang. The North also has active missile programs, but it isn't believed to have an atomic bomb design small and light enough to be mounted on a long-range rocket that could strike targets as far as the U.S.

If confirmed, the North would be the ninth country in the world known to have nuclear weapons. The other countries are the United States, Russia, France, China, Britain, India, Pakistan and Israel.

What next? Once the dust has settled, Japan and the US may seek UN approval for sanctions. Japan may also look at ways to step up unilateral sanctions. China might consider cutting off the economic and energy aid that largely keeps North Korea afloat.

In the long term the biggest fear is that North Korea may have opened a destabilizing local arms race with other nations seek their own atomic weapons as a safeguard against a nuclear-armed North Korea. There also a risk, of course, of an increase in nuclear proliferation as an even more impoverished North Korea selling nuclear technology to whoever is willing to pay for it.

This is not good news whatever way you look at it.

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