Off the wire
• Iran benefits from integration of trade along Silk Road: survey  • Chinese Internet giants woo customers with cash gifts  • 4 Taliban local leaders killed in separate operations in Afghanistan: official  • Syrian army gears up for offensive against another rebel bastion  • Xinjiang welcomes labor-intensive plants for more jobs  • Beijing expects to ease traffic jams  • 4.6-magnitude quake jolts eastern Japan  • Russia condemns DPRK's long-range rocket launch  • Urgent: Volcano erupts in eastern Indonesia  • S. Korea further restricts entry into joint factory park with DPRK  
You are here: 　 Home

Australia condemns DPRK's rocket launch

Xinhua, February 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Sunday in a press release that Australia condemns the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s launch of a long-range rocket.

Calling the launch "provocative and dangerous", Bishop said the DPRK "continues to threaten the peace and security of the region and beyond."

Bishop said DPRK continues to defy multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions that ban the testing of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

This latest provocation follows DPRK's fourth nuclear test, which aggravated the already tense situation on the Korean Peninsula, Bishop said.

It is yet another example of the DPRK regime choosing militarism and isolation over the welfare of its own people, she said.

The Australian government calls on the DPRK government to "cease its provocative behavior and engage constructively with the international community".

Bishop said Australia will express its concerns directly to DPRK as well as in international and regional forums.

She said the Northeast Asian country must be held accountable for its provocations and the UN Security Council must respond strongly.

UN Security Council resolutions ban the DPRK from launching a rocket by using any ballistic missile technologies. A long-range rocket and a ballistic missile have overlapping technologies.

The launch came about a month after the DPRK tested what it claimed to be its first hydrogen bomb, the fourth nuclear detonation following three other ones in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Enditem