North Korea said Monday it performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test, claiming it set off a successful underground blast in a «great leap forward» that defied international warnings against the communist regime. The reported nuclear test sparked condemnation from regional powers who said that, if confirmed, it would be a serious threat to regional stability. The U.S. called for immediate U.N. Security Council action. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully «with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent,» and that no radiation leaked from that test site. «It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the (Korean People's Army) and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability,» KCNA said, adding this was «a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation.» A top Russian military officer confirmed the device tested by North Korea was a nuclear weapon. Russian military monitoring systems «detected the test of a nuclear weapon in North Korea,» Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Lt. Gen. Vladimir Verkhovtsev as saying. «It is 100 percent (certain) that it was an underground nuclear explosion,» the agency quoted Verkhovtsev, the head of a Defense Ministry department, as saying. An official at South Korea's seismic monitoring center confirmed that a magnitude 3.6 tremor felt at the time of alleged North Korea nuclear test wasn't a natural occurrence. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition his name not be used, because he wasn't authorized to talk about the sensitive information to the media. The U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a seismic event with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2 in northeastern North Korea that coincided with the country's announced nuclear test. The Colorado-based agency was unable to tell whether the event was the result of an atomic explosion or a natural earthquake, USGS official Bruce Presgrave said. The size of the tremor could indicate an explosive equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, said Park Chang-soo, spokesman at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources _ which would be far smaller than the nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in World War II. The atomic bomb that struck Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945, had the destructive power of about 15,000 tons (33 million pounds) of TNT. If the test is confirmed, the North would be the ninth country in the world known to have nuclear weapons. The other countries are the United States, Russia, France, China, Britain, India, Pakistan and Israel. The White House said U.S. and South Korean intelligence had detected a seismic event at a suspected nuclear test site in North Korea. «A North Korean nuclear test would constitute a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community and of our call to refrain from actions that would aggravate tensions in Northeast Asia,» White House spokesman Tony Snow said. «We expect the U.N. Security Council to take immediate actions to respond to this unprovoked act,» Snow said. «The United States is closely monitoring the situation and reaffirms its commitment to protect and defend our allies in the region.»
