UNITED NATIONS, May 4. /TASS/. UN Security Council has taken off from voting a draft statement on failed launches of North Korean missiles after the US refused to include an amendment formulated by Russia in the text of the resolution, a well-informed diplomatic source told TASS on Tuesday.
The Russian delegation proposed enlarging the draft statement on condemnation of Pyongyang's actions with a paragraph that would urge the countries entangled in the situation to demonstrate restraint and to make efforts towards a reduction of tensions around the Korean Peninsula.
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In the past few weeks, the US and South Korea have been holding large-scale war games in the areas adjoining Korea. The North Korean leadership sized them up as a provocation and a threat to the DPRK.
The US found the paragraph proposed by Russia to be unacceptable. The Japanese delegation, a nonpermanent member of the Security Council, also spoke out against it.
As a result, adoption of the statement by the Security Council was deadlocked.
Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said on Monday the amendment proposed by Moscow was an important input to the drafting of the document.
"We need to call a spade a spade and we think that asking for the interested parties to scale down their military activity in the region is very important," he said referring to the US and South Korean military activity.
South Korean Defense Ministry said on April 28 that North Korea had made two failed launches of what it believed to be intermediate-range ballistic missiles of the Musudan type with the effective range of up to 4,000 km.
UN Security Council resolutions prohibit any activity related to the development and/or operations of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles to Pyongyang.
Over the past weeks, the Security Council has condemned missile launches by North Korea on three occasions and has warned of a possibility of further substantive measures against Pyongyang, on which it has already imposed the toughest possible sanctions.
At the beginning of the year, North Korea held a nuclear test.
North Korean Foreign Ri Su-yong told AP on April 23 his country would stop the testing of its nuclear armaments if the U.S. stopped annual military exercises together with South Korea.
Neither Washington nor Seoul took this proposal seriously.