MOSCOW – Russia and China expressed serious concern Wednesday about tension on the Korean peninsula and, in the face of increasingly belligerent rhetoric, joined international pressure for North Korea to return to nuclear talks.
The U.S. vowed it would never accept North Korea as an atomic weapons state and, at a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, urged the country to negotiate with the world's great powers instead of making threats.
Only hours earlier, North Korea warned the United States and its allies of a "thousand-fold" military retaliation if provoked.
Japanese and South Korean news reports said North Korea is preparing an additional site for test-firing a long-range missile that experts say could be capable of striking the United States. A Russian deputy defense minister said earlier that Russia would shoot down any North Korean missile headed its way but might not be able to detect missiles aimed in other directions.
North Korea, which held its first nuclear test in 2006, conducted its second on May 25 in defiance of the United Nations.
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