North Korea calls UN chief ‘a puppet of the US’ as it defends flurry of missile tests

Pyongyang’s foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, on Monday accused Secretary General Antonio Guterres of being ‘oblivious’ about UN principles

She said North Korea’s tests were a ‘legitimate and just exercise of the right to self-defence’ in the face of ‘provocative nuclear war rehearsals’

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United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres pictured at the G20 Summit in Bali earlier this month. Photo: AP

Published: 10:03am, 21 Nov 2022

North Korea’s foreign minister called UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “a puppet of the United States” on Monday as she slammed the UN chief for joining US-led condemnation of the North’s recent intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Guterres earlier issued a statement strongly condemning North Korea’s ICBM launch on Friday and reiterating his call for Pyongyang “to immediately desist from taking any further provocative actions”.

Guterres’s statement came after Washington and other governments issued similar criticism of the North’s ICBM test that showed a potential to strike anywhere in the continental US.

A picture provided by North Korean state news agency KCNA shows the firing of what it said was a new type of Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday. Photo: KCNA/dpa

“I often take the UN secretary general for a member of the US White House or its State Department,” North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui said in a statement carried by state media.

“I express my strong regret over the fact that the UN secretary general has taken a very deplorable attitude, oblivious of the purpose and principles of the UN Charter and its proper mission which is to maintain impartiality, objectivity and equity in all matters.”

Choe accused Guterres of overlooking the US and its allies taking the North’s ICBM test to the UN Security Council, saying that “this clearly proves that he is a puppet of the US”.

The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on North Korea’s ICBM launch for Monday morning at Japan’s request. But it’s unclear if it can impose new economic sanctions on North Korea because China and Russia, two of the council’s veto-wielding members, have opposed the US and its allies’ previous moves to toughen sanctions on the North over its banned tests of ballistic missiles earlier this year.