North Korea is to chair a UN disarmament conference, assuming the role after years spent steadily expanding its nuclear programme and flouting UN resolutions with ballistic missile tests.
Its forthcoming presidency of the Conference on Disarmament was announced even as Pyongyang conducted a series of missile tests that prompted condemnation from the US, South Korea and Japan.
Yesterday South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said it had detected what seemed to be the launch of two ballistic missiles from the east coast of North Korea, in what appeared to be its sixth round of tests this month.
The sight of North Korea presiding over a disarmament conference could “undermine the image and credibility of the United Nations,” Hillel Neuer, the executive director of the
