Sanctions on NKorea passed unanimously

From CNN:

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to slap North Korea with trade, travel and other sanctions as punishment for its claimed nuclear weapons test.
President Bush described the U.N. action as a “swift and tough” message that the world is “united in our determination to see to it that the Korean Peninsula is nuclear-weapons free.”
He said North Korea has an opportunity for “a better way forward” and promised help to the impoverished country if it verifiably ends its nuclear weapons program.
North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Pak Gil Yon said Pyongyang “totally rejects the unjustifiable resolution,” calling it “coercive … while neglecting the nuclear threat” he said was posed by the United States against his country.
After the 15-0 vote for Resolution 1718, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said it sent a “clear and strong message” to North Korea, whose claimed nuclear test on Monday poses “one of the gravest threats to peace and security” the council has ever confronted.
Bolton said the resolution calls on Pyongyang to end all nuclear weapons programs. It forbids U.N. member nations from North Korean trade involving nuclear and weapons of mass destruction. North Korean government officials known to be involved in WMD efforts are banned from traveling to member states. It also includes a North Korean ban on “luxury goods.”
If confirmed, it would be the first nuclear weapons test since Pakistan’s underground blast in 1998. The claim has renewed fears of a regional arms race and that North Korea might aid terrorists with nuclear materials or technology.

And why the luxury goods?

The luxury goods mentioned in the sanctions is directed at North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who has a long, documented record of living a life of luxury while his people wasted away in famine. On Friday Bolton said, “The North Korean population’s been losing average height and weight over the years, and maybe this will be a little diet for Kim Jong Il.”

The NKorean Ambassador left quite angry BEFORE the vote. In this video we can see US Ambassador to UN, John Bolton, speaking about this and be questioned about the actions USA was going to take if NKorea test a second nuclear device:

Video found at Atlas Shrugs. Go and read her post. It’s really important.
Flopping Aces has the video in which NKorean representative says that this new resolution is gangster-like

Finally, the sanctions imposed on NKorea are:

• No trade with North Korea involved with weapons of mass destruction or high-end military equipment
• Prevents travel by North Korean government officials known to be involved in WMD efforts
• Includes ban on “trade and luxury goods”
• Targets financing of weapons programs through “criminal activity like money laundering, counterfeiting and narcotics”
• “Imposes binding requirement on all member states to take action against those activities and freeze assets of entities and individuals of North Korea”
• Provides for an inspection regime that would “ensure compliance with its provisions building on the existing work of the Proliferation Security Initiative”
• Requires North Korea not to conduct nuclear tests or launch ballistic missiles
• Demands that North Korea abandon all weapons of mass destruction programs

Source: John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

Also, as I said some days ago, there were some suspicions about the reality of the nuclear test from NKorea. Well, looks like now there is sufficient evidence of considering the test nuclear:

A preliminary analysis of air samples from North Korea shows “radioactive debris consistent with a North Korea nuclear test,” according to a statement sent to U.S. lawmakers Friday from the office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. (Watch for the first evidence that Pyongyang did test a nuke — 1:23 )
If the evidence is confirmed, the United States would be in a position to say the North Korean test was nuclear, a U.S. official told CNN on Friday.
Two U.S. government officials with access to classified information earlier told CNN that an initial air sampling showed no indication of radioactive debris.

There is another more frightening possibility though. Richard Miniter writes for Pajamas Media, that some people have questioned themselves about the possibility of it being a suitcase nuclear bomb… from Russia:

North Korea’s surprisingly small blast – estimated at less than one kiloton – has produced three reactions across the web. It was dud (or misfire), a fake (perhaps using a synchronized detonation of some 800 tons of TNT) or the world’s first suitcase-sized nuclear explosion.
While one of the first two seems most likely, the third possibility is the most frightening. The specter of the nuclear suitcase bomb is particularly potent because it fuses two kinds of terror: the horrible images of Hiroshima and the suicide bomber, the unseen shark amid the swimmers. The fear of a suitcase nuke, like the bomb itself, packs a powerful punch in a smallpackage.
There are plenty of good reasons to worry. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is erratic and ha ties to terrorists and drug lords. (Indeed, illegal drugs are a major component of North Korea’s miniscule $10 billion GDP.) Those drug smuggling routes could be used to ship so-called nuclear suitcases to terrorists. And let’s not forget, another dictatorship led by an erratic messianic leader eager for atomic weapons. We know that North Korea and Iran have shared missile and bomb technology and that Iran seems to be having problems with overheating centrifuges that may be slowing its uranium enrichment efforts. They could use a suitcase nuke right about now.
[...]Kroft: So you’re saying these weapons are no longer under the control of the Russian military.
Lebed [Russian General]:I’m saying that more than one hundred weapons out of the supposed number of 250 are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia. I don’t know their location. I don’t know whether they have been destroyed or whether they are stored or whether they’ve been sold or stolen. I don’t know.

But Lebed contradicted himself afterwards, so he concludes:

So, was the blast a fake? It is possible but not likely, says a well-placed bureaucratic source. Some intelligence community contrarians suggest that North Korea might have synchronized some 600-800 tons of TNT to explode in a mountainside tunnel. The emerging consensus is that such a trick would be very difficult; getting all of the TNT to explode in the same nanosecond is nearly impossible. … Possibly the ring of some 12 to 16 conventional bombs designed to create the nuclear implosion misfired, with some detonations occurring too late or not at all, or the design was flawed.

Of course, knowing that there were some NKoreans playing volleyball near the site where the supposed test was made does not help to considering it as an achieved goal…
So the problem is not a “nucelar suitcase” but, what about a Special Atomic Demolition Munition? USA has the model we can see in the photo. In the link provided it is said: “The SADM had a yield of 0.01, or 0.02-1 kiloton and was operationally deployed between 1964 and 1988. The entire unit weighed less than 163 pounds (74 kilograms)”.

In South Korea there has been an anti-US demonstration. Le Monde makes it a video available, but I fear there are not enough people for making it so important. Of course, it does not consider including this photo (found at Free Thoughts):

La resolución contra Corea del Norte ha sido aprobada por unanimidad. Como ya se anunció ayer, algunos puntos han sido suprimidos. En los videos podemos ver a Bolton, primero, hablando sobre la resolución en sí misma y, después, sobre la actitud que va a tomar ahora EEUU si Corea del Norte ejecuta otro test.
Sin embargo, las dudas están en si efectivamente dicho test ha tenido lugar o, si por el contrario, ha sido fallido. Hoy se ha sabido que algunos científicos estaban jugando al voleybol cerca de donde se cree hubo la explosión. Esto y el hecho de que no haya residuos tóxicos nucleares en el aire, contrasta sin embargo, con la constatación con un 80% de probabilidades, según EEUU, de que sí hubo una explosión.
Y aquí tenemos la segunda cuestión: ¿estamos ante la primera explosión de un “maletín atómico”? Puede que no exactamente como nos lo han contado las películas de James Bond, pero algunos consideran que puede ser un equipo semejante al “equipo de demolición nuclear” americano. La cuestión es importante porque se rumorea que Rusia ha perdido muchos -aunque los rusos han negado hasta su misma existencia- y los terroristas islámicos están ahí. ¿Alguien se imagina el holocausto nuclear por un terrorista suicida? Pues eso… :*(
Le Monde, como buen diario amiguete del País, dice que ha habido una manifestación anti-americana en Corea del Sur. Si se ve el vídeo aparecen 4 gatos y de una edad, digamos, avanzada. Lo que sí es posible es que se llega a un incremento de la militarización, aunque es posible que Corea del Sur no se suba al carro por miedo a Corea del Norte. Seúl tiene 11 millones de habitantes y en cualquier guerra sería un blanco fácil…

Also in Le Monde, Pajamas Media,
Blogs writing about this: in Spanish: Ajopringue (1), Ajopringue (2); in English: , Betsi, who reminds us why the nuclear non-proliferation has not succeeded;Occidentality, Small Town Veteran,Blue Crab Boulevard, NoisyRoom.Net, The Dumb Ox, Stop The ACLU, A Blog for All, The Belmont Club, The Astute Bloggers, Captain’s Quarters, Morning Coffee, Hang Right Politics,; in Italian: Le Guerre Civile (about the dangerous relationship between NKorea, Iran and … China!),
To see a map of the site of the explosion: @import url(http://medias.lemonde.fr/mmpub/css/blog.css);

Le site de l’explosion atomique nord-coréenne
LEMONDE.FR | 09.10.06

Related posts:

• The NKorean nuclear bomb update.
• NKorea conducts nuclear test.
• NKorea will conduct nuclear tests.
• NKorea: their real aim.

technorati tags: North+Korea, South+Korea, United+Nations, UN, John+Bolton, China, USA,

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