A top North Korean diplomat warned on Tuesday that his country is ready to send "more gift packages" to the United States as world powers struggled for a response to Pyongyang's latest nuclear weapons test.
Han Tae Song, ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, confirmed that North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), had successfully conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test on Sunday.
"The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a gift package addressed to none other than the US," Han told a disarmament conference.
"The US will receive more 'gift packages' from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK," he added without elaborating. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Monday accused North Korean leader Kim Jong Un of "begging for war" with a series of nuclear bomb and missile tests. She urged the 15-member Security Council to impose the "strongest possible" sanctions to deter him and shut down his trading partners. But Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday that a US bid for the Security Council to vote on September 11 on new sanctions is “a little premature. Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and has veto power.
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier on Tuesday described more sanctions as a "road to nowhere." Wall Street stocks fell on Tuesday as US trading reopened for the first time since the North Korean nuclear bomb test, and the US dollar and Treasury yields fell. "It’s a more risk-averse picture," said Vassili Serebriakov, FX strategist at Credit Agricole in New York. "North Korea accounts for most of it."