U.N. Council, in Weakened Resolution, Demands End to North Korean Missile Program 
By Warren Hoge
July 16, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/asia/16nations.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 15 — The Security Council condemned North Korea’s missile launchings on Saturday and demanded that the country suspend its ballistic missile program, in a resolution that was weakened at the 11th hour to forestall a veto by China.
All 15 members voted for the measure, which requires all countries to prevent North Korea from receiving or transferring missile-related items and “strongly urges” North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and return to the six-party talks on that program. 
Japan and the United States, the principal sponsors of an original tougher draft, eliminated the main impediment to passage on Saturday by agreeing to drop language citing Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter that expands the reach of sanctions and makes measures enforceable by armed action.
Still, John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, called the council’s action “unequivocal, unambiguous and unanimous.”
North Korea’s ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, told the members afterward that his country “resolutely condemns the attempt of some countries to misuse the Security Council for the despicable political aim to isolate and put pressure on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and totally rejects the resolution.”
Mr. Pak then rose from the horseshoe-shaped panel and left the chamber, prompting Mr. Bolton to say: “This has been a historic day. Not only have we unanimously adopted resolution 1695, but North Korea has set a world record in rejecting it 45 minutes after its adoption.”
China and Russia wanted no mention of Chapter VII for fear that it could be used to justify military strikes on North Korea. Opposition by both countries to the Chapter VII rubric has grown since the war in Iraq and what Beijing and Moscow see as the Bush administration’s resort to military means to remove governments it opposes. Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador, had repeatedly said he would cast his country’s veto if that reference remained.
Mr. Bolton had insisted throughout the week that the resolution had to be adopted under Chapter VII to be binding, but on Friday night he shifted ground and said that it was mandatory that all Security Council resolutions be followed, regardless of whether the Chapter VII language were included.
After the vote, he said, “We look forward to North Korea’s full, unconditional and immediate compliance with this Security Council resolution.”
But he added that the Council had to be prepared that North Korea “might choose a different path” and in that event, he said, “the United States and other member states have the opportunity at any point to return to the Council for further action.”
Mr. Pak left little doubt that North Korea had no intention of complying, saying that it would continue with its missile program, which it considered essential to its self-defense.
The Council members had struggled for days over how to produce a firm response to the seven missile firings that North Korea conducted on July 5 despite warnings from all the world powers, including its principal ally, China.
Japan proposed the resolution on July 7, but agreed in the following days to put off a vote while China pursued a diplomatic solution through a high-level mission to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
After the mission appeared to return empty-handed early this week, negotiations intensified, running day and night and involving Japan and the five permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
On July 11, China and Russia stymied pressure to move to a vote by introducing a rival draft that did not invoke Chapter VII nor include the kind of sanctions against North Korea that were in the original Japanese text.
The action represented a compromise by the two countries, which earlier had insisted that a resolution was an overreaction and would destabilize the region further, and that a simple non-binding presidential statement would suffice.
The Japanese, backed by the United States, insisted on a vote by Saturday to coincide with the opening of the summit meeting in St. Petersburg of the Group of 8 leaders. That meeting is expected to produce another statement on the North Korean test firings.
All the versions of the resolution under discussion at the United Nations focused on the same objectives, but the debate centered on wording changes that are central to the drafting of United Nations resolutions.
In exchange for dropping the critical reference to Chapter VII, for instance, the drafters gained a tougher text on the targeted sanctions sections. That was accomplished by simple word replacements, saying that the Council “demands” and “requires,” rather than “decides,” the stipulations for North Korea. By contrast, the softest of the texts, the one proposed by China and Russia, used “calls upon” and “urges.”
The earlier draft had called for the cessation of North Korea’s development, testing, deployment and proliferation of ballistic missiles. But the final version dropped the specifics and substituted the words “all activities’ related to its missile program.
Mr. Wang said that if the original resolution had gone through, it would have “created enormous obstacles to the six-party talks and other diplomatic endeavors.”