The UN Security Council on Wednesday gathered behind closed doors for an emergency meeting about North Korea's latest ballistic missile test which member states consider a "major threat," the French ambassador said.

In the past, such meetings — this one called by Estonia and France — have often resulted in a joint statement by European members of the Security Council.

But France's ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Riviere, said there was consensus among the group.

"We all condemned what happened, the tests," he said. "Everyone is very concerned about this situation," de Riviere told several journalists after the 45-minute meeting.

"This is a major threat to peace and security, it's a clear violation of the Council's resolutions," he added, saying that the missiles had fallen "within Japan's exclusive economic zone."

"Of course we need a political dialogue, a political solution, but the precondition is compliance (by) the DPRK with UN Security Council resolutions," de Riviere said, using an acronym for North Korea.

"It's a threat to the non-proliferation regime, it's a threat to the world, it's a threat to the neighbors of DPRK: South Korea, Japan," he said.

He added that no joint draft statement was expected to come from the Security Council.

"We fully understand the concerns in this region and we urge DPRK to compliance and resumption of talks."

In a statement from London, the British Foreign Office meanwhile condemned the test as a "clear violation" of Security Council resolutions and a "threat to regional peace and security," as the United States has also done.

"We urge North Korea to refrain from further provocations, and to return to dialogue with the US," the British statement said.

Earlier Wednesday, South Korea fired a submarine ballistic missile and North Korea again fired two ballistic missiles into the sea, in what seems to have become an arms race between two countries still technically at war.

South Korea is not subject to bans on launching ballistic missile tests, according to UN diplomatic sources.

That is in contrast to North Korea, which has faced a series of heavy economic sanctions, especially since 2017, as the international community seeks to limit the North's ballistic and nuclear weapons programs.

US condemns N.Korea launch but calls for dialogue
Washington (AFP) Sept 15, 2021 –

The United States said Wednesday that North Korea violated UN Security Council resolutions by firing two ballistic missiles into the sea but reiterated its willingness to engage the nuclear-armed state.

"The United States condemns the DPRK's missile launch. This launch is in violation of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions and poses a threat to the DPRK's neighbors and other members of the international community," a State Department spokesperson said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

But the spokesperson added: "We remain committed to a diplomatic approach to the DPRK and call on them to engage in dialogue."

President Joe Biden's administration said in an April policy review on North Korea that the United States was willing to engage Pyongyang.

But it also signaled it was looking more for a practical approach following the unusual personal diplomacy of previous president Donald Trump, who met three times with the authoritarian state's young leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump said he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for preventing war, but North Korea never signed a permanent agreement to end its nuclear program.

Pyongyang is under sweeping international sanctions over a series of nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests.

The State Department spokesperson said that US commitment to the defense of South Korea — which carried out its own submarine-launched ballistic missile test Wednesday — and Japan "remains ironclad."