Abe: Pressure only option for N. Korea

“The gravity of this threat is unprecedented,” Abe said at U.N. headquarters in New York. “It is indisputably a matter of urgency.”

The prime minister added, “What is needed ... is not dialogue, but pressure.”

Abe urged U.N. member states to ensure the “strict and full implementation” of the U.N. Security Council resolutions to impose sanctions against North Korea. “Whether or not we can put an end to the provocations by North Korea is dependent upon the solidarity of the international community,” he said.

The North Korean issue took up more than 80 percent of Abe’s 16-minute speech.

“The nonproliferation regime is about to suffer a serious blow from its most confident disrupter ever,” Abe said, criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who is the chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

“North Korea’s nuclear weapons either already are, or are on the verge of becoming, hydrogen bombs,” he argued. “Their means of delivery will sooner or later be ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles].”

Abe said attempts to resolve North Korean issues through dialogue “have all come to naught.” These attempts include the 1994 framework agreed on between the United States and North Korea in which light-water reactors and heavy fuel oil are provided to Pyongyang in exchange for it freezing its nuclear development, and the six-party talks in 2005 and 2007 over the North’s nuclear plans.

“For North Korea, dialogue was, instead, the best means of deceiving us and buying time,” Abe said.

The prime minister prodded countries to strictly implement the series of sanctions resolutions from the U.N. Security Council, including one adopted on Sept. 11 that restricts the export of oil to North Korea.