The agreement to lift the weight limit was reached by US President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in in a phone call on Monday, the South Korean presidential office said in a statement.

FROM THE UN MEETING:

North Korea’s president, Kim Jong-un, “is begging for war,” Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council on Monday.

Her remark came a day after the North’s most power
ful nuclear test, and hours after South Korean officials told lawmakers that North Korea may be making preparations to launch another ballistic missile to mark a national holiday over the coming weekend.

“We have kicked the can down the road long enough,” Ms. Haley told the council in an emergency meeting. “There is no more road left.”

But Ms. Haley did not threaten unilateral military action by Washington, or repeat President Trump’s statement on Twitter that South Korea’s call for more diplomacy was a form of “appeasement.” Ms. Haley said instead that “the time has come for us to exhaust all of our diplomatic means before it’s too late.”

It was the second time in less than a week that the Security Council has met to discuss North Korea, and the 10th time it has done so this year.

The council appeared not to have many more options than it did just six days earlier, when it condemned the North’s tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one that soared over Japan.

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“We are alarmed by this dangerous provocation,” Jeffrey Feltman, an American diplomat who is the United Nations under secretary general for political affairs, told the council on Monday. “This act is also profoundly destabilizing for regional and international security.”

In her speech to the council, Ms. Haley ticked off a lengthy summary of the North’s flouting of international law since 1993, when the United Nations urged the North to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“Despite our efforts over the past 24 years, the North Korean nuclear program is more advanced and more dangerous than ever,” she said. “They now fire missiles over Japanese airspace. They now have I.C.B.M. capabilities. They now claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb. And just this morning there are reports that the regime is preparing for yet another I.C.B.M. launch.”

“We have taken an incremental approach,” she added, “and despite the best of intentions, it has not worked.”

Although experts do not agree on Mr. Kim’s precise motivations, Ms. Haley said “he wants to be acknowledged as a nuclear power,” which she said was unacceptable. “Being a nuclear power is not about using those terrible weapons to threaten others,” she said. “Nuclear powers understand their responsibility. Kim Jong-un shows no such understanding.”

Koro Bessho, the Japanese ambassador to the United Nations, also stopped short of threatening imminent military action, but said the danger from North Korea had been “raised to an unprecedented level” and “a grave threat to the peace and the security of the world.”

François Delattre, the French ambassador to the United Nations, called for the prompt adoption of new sanctions and said “the threat has changed in nature and dimension” over just the past few months.

“It is no longer a regional threat, it is a global threat,” he said. “It is no longer a virtual threat, it is an imminent threat. It is no longer a serious threat, it is an existential threat.”

“Our credibility is at stake,” he added, lamenting the North’s disregard for international law and its refusal to give an inch during years of sporadic talks. “The sole response that we presently can put forward is strict, unambiguous policy based upon the goals of a complete dismantling of the North Korean program.”

The Security Council severely tightened sanctions against North Korea last month, but there is little to suggest that the pressure has influenced Mr. Kim or his decision-making. Nonetheless, there are few palatable military options, a reality that the diplomats essentially conceded.

Matthew Rycroft, the British envoy to the United Nations, said the sanctions were working, making it harder for Pyongyang to acquire the hard currency needed to finance its weapons program.

But he said North Korea was “uniquely wiling to put their illicit programs ahead of the well being of its people.”

Mr. Rycroft said the world remained open for North Korea to “return to dialogue.”

Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, vowed that Beijing “will never allow chaos and war” on the Korean Peninsula, where the United States and China were both combatants in a war that lasted from 1950 to 1953. He called for all sides to return to the negotiating table.

Like his Chinese counterpart, Vasily A. Nebenzya, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, condemned North Korea in forceful terms, but also argued that there was no feasible military resolution.

“It is no exaggeration to state that peace in the region is in serious jeopardy, and the threat of this conflict morphing into a ‘hot stage’ looms larger than ever before,” Mr. Nebenzya said, arguing that “the latest, blatant disregard by North Korea” of Security Council resolutions “warrants the most vehement condemnation.”

The nuclear test the North carried out on Sunday was its most powerful by far. The underground blast triggered a magnitude 6.3 tremor centered at the testing site in the country’s northeast, the United States Geological Survey said. It was followed by a weaker tremor believed to have been the result of a collapse in the testing site.

The nuclear test came after threats against the American territory of Guamand weeks of missile tests, including launches demonstrating that North Korea had the capability to reach much of the United States.

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The South Korean military carried out drills Monday in response to the test, with F-15K fighter jets and ground forces firing missiles in a simulated attack on the North’s nuclear site.

The South Korean defense minister, Song Young-moo, also said Monday that in recent talks he had asked the United States to deploy strategic assets, including an aircraft carrier group and bombers.

It was not immediately clear what sort of missile North Korea was preparing for a possible test. It first tested its new Hwasong-14 missile on July 4, and again on July 28. The second test showed the missile had a range of about 6,500 miles, which would put the western and central United States within range.

News of preparations for a possible missile test came as the South Korean Defense Ministry said the United States military would soon add four additional launchers for a missile defense system deployed in the country’s south, Yonhap reported.

President Trump said on Twitter that the test was an “embarrassment” to China, the North’s biggest ally and trade partner, and he criticized South Korea, an American ally, which he accused of “talk of appeasement.”

The office of South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, responded that it was working to exert “maximum sanctions and pressure” on the North and reiterated that its goal was “peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

South Korea’s Ministry of the Environment was also expected to give its approval Monday for the full deployment of a missile defense system operated by the United States, Yonhap reported, citing unidentified sources.

MILCOMM: NORTH KOREANS HAVE STARTED PREPARING FOR MULTIPLE MISSILE LAUNCH. LAUNCH IS IMMINENT

PUTIN SAYS IN TELEPHONE CONVERSATION WITH S. KOREAN LEADER THAT SETTLEMENT OF SITUATION IN KOREAN PENINSULA POSSIBLE ONLY BY MEANS OF NEGOTIATIONS – KREMLIN

Risk of Korean Peninsula conflict moving to hot stage has never been greater – Russian permanent rep to UN

US splits with China, Russia on North Korea solution at UN

The United States on Monday flatly rejected a proposal from China and Russia on how to lower tensions on the Korean Peninsula, which is likely to make it difficult for the United Nations Security Council to agree on a response to North Korea’s hydrogen bomb test over the weekend.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said the U.S. would be circulating a proposed resolution on North Korea this week, and would push for a vote next week

While it’s not clear what that language will say, both China and Russia made it clear they were unlikely to support more sanctions, and instead played up their joint call for North Korea to stop its military aggression in return for both South Korea and the U.S. to stop their mil
itary exercises.

Haley called that idea “insulting.”

“The idea that some have suggested, a so-called freeze for freeze, is insulting,” she said. “When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon, and an ICBM pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard. No one would do that. We certainly won’t.”

Instead, she hinted at the idea of tough sanctions that would be imposed on any country that does any business with North Korea.

But after she spoke, both Russia and China made it clear they don’t like that idea.

Liu Jeiyi, China’s ambassador to the UN, promoted the China-Russia plan as “practical and feasible,” and noted it would call on the U.S. and South Korea to “suspend their large scale military exercises.”

Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, noted that Haley summarized how past UN resolutions failed to contain North Korea, and argued they failed because they relied on sanctions, not dialogue.

“This excursus into history only serves as evidence of the fact that we failed to resolve this issue through Security Council resolutions which were only geared towards leveraging sanctions mechanisms,” he said.

Those major splits make it unclear if the Security Council can successfully pass any new language on North Korea.

Last month, the Council successfully passed a resolution sanctioning North Korea after a wave of new missile tests. But in July, Russia vetoed a resolution denouncing a test North Korea made on July 4.

By,Hal Turner Radio Show