WASHINGTON AND THE UNITED NATIONS — The United States and its allies labored Sunday to devise a concerted response to North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket, but quickly ran into divisions over how to confront the defiant regime.
The United Nations Security Council met in a hastily called session to consider official condemnation of the launch, but ended the meeting with no immediate action beyond a promise to continue to seek a common response in the coming days.
The U.S. and its allies fear that North Korea was testing its ability to deliver nuclear weapons by firing off the three-stage rocket, which flew over Japan on Sunday morning and plunged into the Pacific. President Obama and other leaders were quick to condemn the launch.
"North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles," said Obama, who was awakened Sunday with word of the launch.
Obama, who is visiting Prague, Czech Republic, said the move threatened countries "near and far" and underscored "the need for action not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons."
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, recently returned from the Group of 20 nations' economic summit in London with Obama and other leaders, said North Korea must be held accountable for its actions.
"This is an extremely provocative act, and it cannot be dismissed," Aso said.
North Korea has insisted that the launch was designed to put a communications satellite into orbit. Within hours of the three-stage rocket lifting off from the Musudan-ri launch facility at 11:30 a.m. local time, the state-run North Korean news agency declared it a success.
"The carrier rocket and the satellite developed by our own wisdom and technology are the fruit of our struggle to enhance our nation's space science technology to a higher level," said the Korean Central News Agency.
But U.S. and South Korean defense officials and weapons experts later reported that the rocket failed to send a satellite into orbit, if that was the goal.
American officials maintain that the launch violated terms of a U.N. resolution in 2006 that imposed sanctions on the North after it tested a nuclear device. But China and Russia disputed that view, saying the resolution was ambiguous in its language.
