North Korea rejects UN statement, says missile launch defensive
JUSTIFIED: Envoy says divided Korean peninsula is ‘world’s biggest hotspot’
GENEVA: North Korea on Tuesday rejected the UN Security Council’s statement on its weekend missile launch and declared that all of its tests were “self-defence measures” designed to protect its people.
The UN Security Council on Monday denounced North Korea’s missile launch, urging members to “redouble efforts” to enforce sanctions against the reclusive state, but gave no indications of any action it might take.
Han Tae Song, the new Ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the United Nations in Geneva, was addressing the Conference on Disarmament a day after taking up his post.
“The various test fires conducted by DPRK for building up self-defence capabilities are, with no exception, self-defence measures to protect national sovereignty and the safety of the people against direct threats by hostile forces,” Han told the 61-member state forum.
“The successful test launch of a medium-to-long range missile on February 12th is a part of self-defence measures,” he said. “In this respect, my delegation strongly rejects the latest statement of the UN Security Council and all UN resolutions against my country.”
In New York, US Ambassador Nikki Haley said in a statement after the Security Council meeting that it was “time to hold North Korea accountable” with “actions”.
US, Japanese and South Korean military officials held a teleconference on Monday in which they condemned the launch as “a clear violation” of multiple Security Council resolutions. The United States “reaffirmed its ironclad security commitments” to South Korea and Japan, the Pentagon said.
Han said the divided Korean peninsula “remains the world’s biggest hotspot with a constant danger of war”.
He condemned joint military exercises carried out annually by South Korea and the United States, as well as what he called “nuclear threats” and blackmail towards his country.
“It is the legitimate self-defence right of the sovereign state to possess strong deterrence to cope with SHANGHAI: China and India accounted for more than half of the total number of global deaths attributable to air pollution in 2015, researchers said in a study published on Tuesday.
The US-based Health Effects Institute (HEI) found that air pollution caused more than 4.2 million early deaths worldwide in 2015, making it the fifth highest cause of death, with about 2.2 million deaths in China and India.
The institute’s study, the first of its kind, was based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project, a database backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that tracks the role that behavioural, dietary and environmental factors play in deaths across 195 countries.
New evidence and methodologies such threat by hostile forces aimed at overthrowing the state and the mean that the estimate is significantly higher than the figure published by the World Health Organization last year, which put the number of global air pollution-related deaths in 2012 at 3 million, HEI said.
The institute, which has also launched an online database showing the global impact of pollution on health said 92 per cent of the world’s population lives in areas with unhealthy air.
Air pollution has been linked to higher rates of cancer, stroke and heart disease, as well as chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma.
China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, each accounted for 1.1 million deaths, the findings showed, but China is pushing socialist system,” he said.
North Korea shared common goal of denuclearisation, Han said.
“The DPRK supports global efforts toward nuclear disarmament and complete obliteration of nuclear weapons and we play a responsible role to contribute to achieving global denuclearisation,” he said.
Japan’s disarmament Ambassador Nobushige Takamizawa in Geneva condemned North Korea’s latest missile launch and urged Pyongyang to comply with Security Council resolutions and not take further “provocative actions” that undermine peace and security in the region. mankind’s global ahead when it comes to taking action, HEI president Dan Greenbaum said.
“(India) has got a longer way to go, and they still appear to have some ministers who say there is not a strong connection between air pollution and mortality in spite of quite a lot of evidence,” he said.
A spokesman for India’s environment ministry could not be reached for comment, but minister Anil Madhav Dave said last week that “there is no conclusive data available” on the link between pollution and mortality, media reported.
China’s environment ministry did not respond to a request to comment on whether the estimate of 1.1 million deaths was accurate. — Reuters