Kim Jong-un thumbs nose at Barack Obama’s nuclear summit

The regime of Kim Jong-un underlined his defiance of nuclear summits by shooting a short-range missile into the sea.

US President Barack Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC.

The 52 leaders at the Nuclear ­Security Summit in Washington were seeking last night to ensure the six-year process to highlight existential nuclear threats, ­concludes on a high today — with agreement on how to tackle the dangers posed by North Korea and terrorists.

The regime of Kim Jong-un underlined his defiance of such summits by shooting a short-range missile into the sea yesterday, following its nuclear and long-range rocket tests earlier this year, three days after firing another short-range missile on the land in the country’s northeast.

Australia has sent a military contingent to the annual Key ­Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises, led by US and South Korean ­forces, now under way on the ­Korean peninsula and which the North bitterly opposes.

At separate meetings on the sidelines of the two-day summit, US President Barack Obama, China’s Xi Jinping, South Korea’s Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe all called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Mr Obama said he wanted the fourth round of sanctions levelled by the UN Security Council on the hermit state — an act of rare agreement by the Permanent Five on legacy Cold War ­issues such as North Korea — to be “vigilantly enforced” and possibly stepped up.

“We are united in our efforts to deter and defend against North Korean provocations,” he said.

Mr Xi appeared in a mood to consider this positively. He urged “all parties strictly to carry out the relevant UN resolutions”.

He has used his attendance at the fourth of the summits Mr Obama initiated in 2010 as an ­opportunity to stress China’s willingness — reclaiming contested reefs for military installations in the South China Sea aside — to build closer links with the US across a wide range of fronts, and to ­demonstrate its appetite for multilateral diplomacy.

China’s Xinhua news agency listed six multilateral meetings that Mr Xi had attended last year, “to name a few”, and highlighted the collaboration between the US and China at the UN ­climate change conference in Paris in ­December.

Mr Obama, Mr Abe and Ms Park also discussed the deployment of the sophisticated missile system THAAD — the Theatre High Altitude Area Defence System — to South Korea.

The move has raised concerns in Beijing, which is unhappy at the prospect of the US hardware on its doorstep, fearing it will further tip the balance of power in the Pacific towards Washington.

“It in no way threatens either Chinese or Russian or other ­security interests in the region and will do nothing to undermine strategic stability between the US and China,” insisted Dan Kritenbrink, Mr Obama’s leading Asia adviser.

The terrorism threat was underlined on the eve of the summit by the news that two of last week’s Brussels bombers, brothers ­Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, had been linked to 10 hours of surveillance tapes of a leading official at a Belgian nuclear plant. This underlined the fear Islamic State could obtain uranium or plutonium to build a “dirty bomb”.

White House spokesman Ben Rhodes said the “counter-­productive” choice of Russian President Vladimir Putin to stay away from the summit was a missed opportunity for the Kremlin as it faces its own challenges from terrorism.

A commentary in the People’s Daily, in contrast, stressed that the ­attendance of ­Beijing’s national leaders at all four of Mr Obama’s summits “demonstrates China’s emphasis on ­nuclear security and responsibility for global security”, citing the rise of Islamic State “and other terrorist forces”.

Underlining the current ­inclination in Beijing to stress the positives in the US relationship, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Beijing would for the third time accept an invitation from Washington to join this year’s RIMPAC joint exercise.

Australia also plays a significant role in the US Pacific Fleet exercise held every two years.