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Obama condemns North Korea nuclear test as ‘grave threat’

Posted at 8:27 AM, Sep 09, 2016
and last updated 2016-09-09 11:00:27-04

(CNN) — The United States condemns North Korea’s Friday nuclear test “in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.

He said that he spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye separately by phone, and that the leaders agreed to work with other nations to “vigorously implement existing measures imposed in previous resolutions, and to take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.”

North Korea says the nuclear warhead explosion test was conducted in a nuclear research center located at the northern test site, according to a broadcast from North Korea Television, KCTV.

The KCTV presenter said the test showed the nuclear warhead “has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.” That would enable North Korea to “produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power.”