"In the event that North Korea conducts a nuclear test, it would inevitably be necessary to seek a resolution with Chapter VII at the UN Security Council," vice foreign minister Shotaro Yachi said.

New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, well known for his hard line on Pyongyang, is set on Sunday to visit China and
South Korea which have warned against further isolating their communist neighbor.

"A good discussion has to take place at the
United Nations to make the North realize that if the country continues taking such actions it would be in an even more severe situation," Abe told parliament.

North Korea on Tuesday dramatically raised the stakes in the long-running standoff over its nuclear programme by announcing it would test a bomb at an unspecified date.

Chosun Sinbo, a newspaper published by ethnic Koreans in Japan and seen as representing Pyongyang's view, warned Thursday that a test was "unavoidable" unless the United States adopted a more conciliatory stance.

"The DPRK (North Korea) statement on a nuclear test is not empty talk but clearly premised on action," the newspaper said in a dispatch from Pyongyang, according to its Korean-language website.

Japan and the United States already have imposed most of the sanctions at their disposal against the impoverished nation, which conducts the bulk of its trade with China and South Korea.

The North, which last year declared itself nuclear-armed, has boycotted six-nation disarmament talks since November to protest one set of US sanctions aimed at blocking it from money laundering and counterfeiting.

But even after Tuesday's statement there was no sign of unanimity at the Security Council, which rebutted Japanese and US attempts to invoke Chapter VII after North Korea test-fired seven missiles in July.

US ambassador John Bolton spoke of "division" within the body, saying the regime's "protectors" -- implying veto-wielding Moscow and Beijing -- opposed a tough line.

His Chinese counterpart Wang Guangya took exception, urging "less mistrust" between Washington and Pyongyang.

"We are all concerned about the North Korean announcement. On this issue, everybody is unanimous," Wang said. "No one is going to protect them."

The Security Council's 15 ambassadors were due to meet again on Thursday to study a Japanese draft "presidential statement," which is non-binding.

Japan is willing to downgrade it even to a simple press statement so it can be passed as quickly as possible before any test, chief government spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki said in Tokyo.

A US intelligence official said unusual movement had been detected at one of several suspected test sites in North Korea.

The official, who spoke to AFP in Washington on condition of anonymity, said it was difficult to discern how advanced North Korea's test preparations might be.

"The bottom line is they could conduct it with little or no warning."

South Korean daily Dong-a Ilbo put two dates on the watchlist for a test -- Sunday, October 8, marking leader Kim Jong-Il taking leadership in the ruling Workers Party, and October 10, marking the party's birthday.

The newspaper predicted the North Koreans could also pick October 9, when Abe is due to make his maiden visit to South Korea as prime minister.

It said the North Koreans had timed the planned test ahead of November 7 US midterm elections in which the Republican party of
President George W. Bush -- who branded Pyongyang part of an "axis of evil" -- is predicted to lose seats.

Christopher Hill, the US lead negotiator to stalled six-party talks, said Washington had warned the North Koreans against a test via their mission at the United Nations.

"I am not prepared at this point to say what we are going to do, but I am prepared to say we are not going to wait for a nuclear North Korea. We are not going to accept it," Hill said.

It stresses several times that North Korea was compelled to conduct a nuclear test because of the pressures and sanctions from the U.S. but makes no mention of when and how. Some experts here say the statement could be a bargaining chip to urge the U.S. and others to lift their financial sanctions, rather than an announcement of an imminent test. They feel the announcement came out of consideration of the situation in general, including more sanctions against the North from the U.S. and Japan, the proposed Seoul-Tokyo and Seoul-Beijing summits, and a "common and comprehensive approach" by Seoul and Washington to the North Korean nuclear and missile issues. They expect that if the U.S. does not come forward to conduct negotiations, it will increase chances of Pyongyang actually carrying out the threat.

The statement vows the North "will never use nuclear weapons first but strictly prohibit any threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear transfer" and "do its utmost to realize the denuclearization of the Peninsula and give impetus to worldwide nuclear disarmament and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons." It recalls that the North officially announced it has modern nuclear weapons last year, and claims the announcement was based on a nuclear test.

The statement says the North's ultimate goal is not denuclearization that would lead to one-sided disarmament on the peninsula but one that will improve the hostile relationship between the North and the U.S. and fundamentally remove all the nuclear threats on the Korean Peninsula and in surrounding areas. It adds there is no change in its intent to realize the denuclearization of the peninsula "through dialogue and negotiation." North Korea used the same sentence when it declared it has nuclear arms in February last year, indicating that it does not rule out negotiations to address the situation.

(englishnews@chosun.com )

He laid down the ultimatum, though without hint of what further measures the Americans might take against the regime, as unnamed US officials told several news outlets that new signs of activity had been detected at a potential explosion site.

The most likely site for North Korea's first nuclear explosive test is understood to be near the Punggye-yok underground facility in Kilchu county of North Hamgyong province. Punggye-yok was the focus of unrealised test scares in 2004 and last year.

Satellite surveillance is said to have detected vehicles, people and the movement of materials at nearby Mount Mantap, into which South Korean intelligence officials say a tunnel and horizontal shafts have been driven.

A South Korean congressman who sits on a national assembly security committee, Song Young-sun, said yesterday eight sites in the north and west of the country were under surveillance.

Punggye-yok is about 35km northwest of Musudan-ri, the base from which Pyongyang launched its unsuccessful Taepodong-2 long-range ballistic missile on July 5.

One US official told the AFP news agency the North Koreans' test preparations might be a bluff but "the bottom line is they could conduct it with little or no warning". There is speculation the North Koreans could explode their bomb - they are generally thought to have at least six relatively crude devices - as early as Sunday, when Japan's new Prime Minister will be in Beijing for a summit with President Hu Jintao.

Possible pre-test activities have been detected for more than six weeks but on Tuesday North Korea's Foreign Ministry said, for the first time definitely, the regime would explode a nuclear weapon, justified by the alleged threat of US invasion and further heavy sanctions.

China, North Korea's vital ally, toughened its posture yesterday with the state-run Xinhua news agency reporting that Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing had told North Korea's ambassador to convey to Pyongyang's leadership that "serious consequences" would follow a nuclear explosion.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also announced Moscow was "holding direct talks with the leaders of North Korea" in the hope of persuading Pyongyang not to carry out a test.

Mr Hill attacked the idea that seems to be central to current Pyongyang thinking: eventually after a test the US would have to accept and deal with nuclear North Korea, as it has done with India and Pakistan.

But Mr Hill characterised the Kim regime as a unique threat to the stability of northeast Asia and to US allies Japan and South Korea. "We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea, we are not going to accept it," Mr Hill said.

"We have responsibilities throughout Asia, throughout the world (and) we will honour those responsibilities.

"We will honour our alliance relationships, especially in the Republic of Korea and in Japan.

"(North Korea) will realise at some point in the future that they had a very bad day when they made that choice."

Agreement on a UN Security Council statement demanding North Korea withdraw its test threat appeared to be closer yesterday when Japan, the current council president, offered a compromise to China.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said yesterday in Tokyo that Japan was prepared to have the UN Security Council warning issued as a press statement, rather than the weightier presidential statement.

The statement from the North Korean Foreign Ministry said that the test would be conducted "in the future" and "under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed". Although North Korea claims to have produced nuclear weapons, it has never carried out a nuclear test.

Also yesterday, hopes that Iran could be coaxed into curbing its nuclear programme faded after the European official who had been holding discreet talks with the chief Iranian negotiator informed European ministers and the US that they had failed.

As a result, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, the US, France, Russia and China - have agreed to discuss economic sanctions against Tehran "in the coming week or so" at the United Nations, a senior British official said.

Russia, which has resisted possible sanctions aimed at forcing the Iranian leadership to agree to a suspension of uranium enrichment before negotiations on a package of incentives, continued to insist yesterday that the issue should be resolved through negotiations.

The British official recognised that "on the details there are differences", but that all the UN big powers agreed on "incremental" coercive measures. As a first step, these are expected to target exports to Iran which could be used for its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, who is currently on a Middle East tour, may discuss Iran in London with other European partners later this week. Speaking in Cairo last night, she said that "the only choice for the international community is to live up to the terms" of the UN resolution that ordered Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment programme or face consequences. "And that is to bring sanctions," she said.

Western experts believe that although Iran and North Korea are not co-ordinating their strategy, they are carefully watching how each other's actions are playing out.

The Lebanon war, in which Iran's proxy militia survived a month-long pounding by the Israeli military, is considered to be a factor in the Iranian leadership's resolve to reject the UN demands to curb its programme, which is not as far advanced as that of North Korea. US military strikes against Iran are now seen by Tehran as unlikely because of Hizbollah's proclaimed "victory" in Lebanon.

Iran says that its nuclear programme is peaceful, but the US and Europe believe that its civilian programme could be a cover for building a weapon.

The long-running dispute with both countries is now entering an unpredictable phase, with uncertainty over how Iran may react to possible UN sanctions.

Tehran may be tempted to carry out its threat of using oil as a weapon, or even pull out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, as North Korea did in 2002.

But although the White House and State Department warned that a "provocative" and "reckless" test would only lead to further isolation for Pyongyang, Washington signalled its preference to resolve the dispute through diplomatic channels. The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, urged Security Council members to discuss the next steps.

In an early sign of the tough line being taken by the new government headed by Shinzo Abe in Japan, the Foreign Minister, Taro Aso, called the North's nuclear test plans "totally unforgivable," and said Tokyo would react "sternly" if the North conducted a test.

North Korea is being urged to return to six-party talks - involving both Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan - which it has boycotted for the past year.

Iran is a year away from mastering the enrichment technology that could lead to production of a bomb, according to British officials.

His victory was all but assured late on Monday after a final informal poll among the 15 envoys on the Security Council. Mr Ban, who is 62 and a graduate of Harvard, won 14 "encourage" votes and only one "no opinion". Most importantly, he won nods from all of the veto-wielding permanent members.

Final congratulations will likely come next Monday, when the Security Council is set formally to ask Mr Ban to lead a body with 9,000 workers, a $2bn (£1.1bn) budget and the scars of recent scandals, notably in the now defunct Iraqi oil-for-food programme. His appointment for a first five-year term will then be handed to the General Assembly for its approval, which is seen as a mere formality.

Among those disappointed is Shashi Tharoor, who has served with Kofi Annan as an assistant secretary general. Championed by his native India, Mr Tharoor, 50, withdrew after Monday's poll, acknowledging that Mr Ban's position was unassailable. "It is a great honour and a huge responsibility to be secretary general," he said in a brief statement, "and I wish Mr Ban every success in that task."

Although one of the late entrants to the race was the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, there has long been a tacit understanding in the Security Council that the eighth secretary general of the UN would come from Asia. The last Asian to lead the body was U Thant of Burma, who left office in 1971.

For South Korea, the selection of Mr Ban holds some historical satisfaction. The country, after all, owes its existence to the UN, which established its border in 1948 and provided blue-helmet troops to defend it during the Korean War. "We Koreans have quite literally risen from the ashes of war," he said recently.

Mr Ban, who was born in the rural town of Chungju in central South Korea in 1944 and is married to a childhood sweetheart, has nurtured ambitions to be a global diplomat since his teens.

At the age of 18 he found himself selected by the International Red Cross to travel to the United States, where he was taken to the White House and introduced to President John F Kennedy. Already he knew his calling, and later studied international relations at Seoul University, before attending the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

His career has been threaded with connections both to the US and the United Nations. Before becoming Foreign Minister in 2004, he served as chief aide to the president of the UN's General Assembly, also from South Korea, for one year after September 2001. Among their first challenges was crafting the UN's response to the 9/11 terror attacks in New York.

That Mr Ban is considered a close ally of Washington is no secret, and he enjoyed the firm backing during the polling process of the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. "The United States is very pleased with the outcome," Mr Bolton acknowledged on Monday night. Closeness to the US can bring peril to a secretary general, however, and Mr Ban can be expected to downplay its significance.

In London, the Foreign Office is also expressing quiet approval. "We are very happy with him coming through," a senior British official said. Less certain is the ardour of France, which normally insists that a secretary general speaks fluent French. Mr Ban is reportedly taking lessons.

The charisma deficit may yet prove a problem for a man whose job includes being a voice for peace on the world stage. Insiders say that when he speaks publicly, Mr Ban can be halting, and relies on prepared notes. Yet he has publicly insisted in recent days that his external demeanour can be deceiving. "I may look soft from the outside, but I have inner strength when it's really necessary," he commented. "I have always been very decisive."

He signalled yesterday, that pressing forward with UN reform and streamlining its bureaucracy would be a first priority.

"I will try to change the whole mindset of the United Nations Secretariat," he warned, adding that he would work first to "restore the confidence of the United Nations".

Is Ban the right man for the job?

Critics Say: Ban lacks a key ingredient for the post of world spokesman for peace and development: charisma.

He Says: It's the Asian way. Behind the low-key exterior lies a man of passion and persuasion.

Critics Say: South Korea in effect bought the job by recently announcing large aid packages to developing countries, particularly in Africa.

He Says: Reports were a "smear campaign" against him and that aid deals were agreed by Seoul long before he launched his candidacy.

Critics Say: Ban may not have the steel to deal with world crises in Middle East and elsewhere.

He Says: He has experience confronting the worst problems, keeping the peace on the Korean peninsula and confronting North Korea on its nuclear ambitions.