MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. North Korea may conduct another nuclear test in response to US actions in the region, to its joint exercises with South Korea in particular, said Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov.

"Simply receiving a nod from the [UN] Security Council could matter to North Korea, while the Americans have rendered sending such a signal impossible. As a result, we are witnessing a complete stagnation, if not degradation, in this sphere. Another nuclear test cannot be ruled out against this background," the Russian envoy said at a briefing on Friday.

North Korea should be encouraged to get back to dialogue, while the Americans have been moving in the opposite direction by holding drills near the North Korean border, Ulyanov noted.

He cited numerous think-tanks and experts who assume North Korea is getting ready for a nuclear test. "There is such likelihood. If that happens, the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization would convene an emergency session, and it would either adopt a resolution or issue a condemnation," he forecasted. However, Ulyanov suspected, North Korea would not care much for that.

"The Americans have been actually violating the commitments fixed in UN Security Council resolutions on sanctions. True, sanctions were imposed, and yet at the end of every such resolution, it was noted, primarily at our insistence, that the Security Council would closely monitor the developments and North Korea’s behavior in order to either lift or suspend or impose new sanctions, depending on how North Korea behaves," he said. The Russian diplomat pointed to a number of positive steps taken by Pyongyang in recent years, namely its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons, which were never acknowledged in return.