North Korean leaders met, Nuclear test possible

Seoul: Fuelling expectations of an imminent nuclear test, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has chaired a high-level meeting on Sunday.

Experts and intelligence sources say the country has completed preparations for a third nuclear test which it threatened in response to tightened UN sanctions imposed for a long-range rocket launch last December.

Over the past week Pyongyang has issued a series of daily warnings threatening action over the sanctions, including a promise yesterday of the “toughest retaliation”.

The North insists its December rocket launch was a purely scientific mission to put a satellite into orbit.

But the US and its allies, including the South, viewed it as a disguised ballistic missile test that violated UN resolutions prompted by the North’s rocket launches and nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

On Monday South Korea and its ally the United States will start a joint naval exercise seen largely as a warning to the North.