The White House is calculating its response to North Korea's defiant Fourth of July missile tests which raised the stakes in a nuclear standoff and pressured the United States and its partners to penalize Pyongyang, the Associated Press reported. The Bush administration strongly condemned North Korea's test-firing of six missiles, including a long-range one capable of reaching U.S. soil, but said they did not pose a danger to America. For now, talking is the order of the day. Japan asked the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency session Wednesday. Tokyo was expected to present a U.N. resolution protesting the missile tests, which sent U.S. officials scurrying to telephones for urgent, long-distance diplomacy. The long-range missile, called the Taepondong-2, failed less than a minute after liftoff. It's unclear what North Korea learned from launching the shorter and medium-range ones, which fell into the Sea of Japan, but could be capable of striking its neighbors. "Regardless of whether the series of launches occurred as North Korea planned, they nevertheless demonstrate North Korea's intent to intimidate other states by developing missiles of increasingly longer ranges," White House press secretary Tony Snow said in a statement released late Tuesday night. "We urge the North to refrain from further provocative acts, including further ballistic missile launches." The White House said the United States would continue to take all necessary measures to protect itself and its allies, yet further diplomacy, not military action, appeared to be the preferred course of action. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state, began talking Tuesday with their counterparts in Japan, China, Russia and South Korea. Hill was being dispatched to the region for new rounds of discussions. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was meeting Wednesday with his South Korean counterpart, a meeting that now will be dominated by the tests, which could plunge global relations with the reclusive communist nation farther into a deep freeze. "We do consider it provocative behavior," Hadley told reporters in a telephone briefing Tuesday. President Bush, who was at the White House with family and friends gathered to celebrate the Fourth of July and his 60th birthday on Thursday, was notified of the test firings, and consulted with Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "It wasn't that he (the president) was surprised because we've seen this coming for a while," Hadley said. "I think his instinct is that this just shows the defiance of the international community by North Korea."
