Obama: N. Korea ‘challenging’ the world

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May 25: President Obama makes remarks on North Korea's nuclear test.

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'Engaged in intensive diplomacy'
At the State Department, officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was "engaged in intensive diplomacy" on the issue.

It said in a statement that she "has been in regular consultation with our Six Party partners," spoke with her counterparts in Japan and South Korea and planned to speak later Monday with officials in China and Russia.

"In her conversations, the secretary stressed the importance of a strong, unified approach to this threat to international peace and security," State said. The statement said that Clinton "reiterated our commitment to regional security and to our alliances."

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Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last month dismissed an earlier rocket launch as a failure — both technologically and as an effort to market its missiles to other countries.

"Would you buy from somebody that had failed three times in a row and never been successful?" he asked during a briefing at the Pentagon. Cartwright said the abortive missile launch showed that North Korea had failed to master the midair thrust shift from one rocket booster to another, an integral part of ballistic missile technology.

'A grave threat to the United States'
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CBS's "The Early Show" show that "all of those things point to a country I think continues to destabilize that region and in the long term, should they continue to develop a nuclear weapons program, poses a grave threat to the United States."

He did not discuss whether there were any changes in U.S. military alert status.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leading a congressional delegation on a tour in China, said, "If today's announcement is true, these tests would be a clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718, which requires that North Korea not conduct any further nuclear tests. Such action by North Korea is unacceptable and cause for great alarm."

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Wendy Sherman, a former Clinton administration adviser on North Korean policy, told The Associated Press: "We're sending the message that there is international law; there are international norms; that countries will be isolated from the international community."

"U.S. officials had expected that North Korea might conduct a second nuclear test," she said. "That said, this is as President Obama said, 'of grave concern.' "