North Atlantic Council statement on the North Korean missile launch

July 13, 2017

The North Atlantic Council condemns in the strongest possible terms the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) unprecedented launch of a ballistic missile of intercontinental range.

A major escalation that directly violates multiple United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions and clearly demonstrates the growing threat posed by the DPRK to the Alliance, to global peace and security, as well as to the global non-proliferation regime. We are supportive of efforts underway at the United Nations to impose additional sanctions on the DPRK, and call for all nations to fully implement existing UN sanctions and make further efforts to apply decisive pressure to convince the DPRK regime to abandon its current threatening and destabilising path.

We are deeply concerned by the persistent, provocative, and destabilising behaviour of the DPRK, including both its ongoing nuclear weapons programme and its numerous tests of ballistic missiles and ballistic missile technology in 2017. The DPRK’s flagrant disregard of international agreements and confrontational actions undermine regional stability, jeopardise the prospects for lasting peace in the Korean Peninsula, and pose a growing threat to international peace and security.

We are committed to a lasting peace and denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner. The DPRK must refrain from any further provocative and illegal acts, abide by its obligations under relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions and its international commitments, and abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner.

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