UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) – The United States led a push at the UN Security Council Wednesday for tougher sanctions on North Korea after the watershed test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that Kim Jong-Un dubbed a gift to “American bastards.”

After US and South Korean forces fired off missiles simulating a precision strike against North Korea’s leadership in response to Tuesday’s test, the focus shifted to diplomacy at an emergency Security Council session.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley said Washington was working on a draft resolution imposing sanctions on Kim’s regime, calling the ICBM launch a “sharp military escalation” that made “the world a more dangerous place.”

“In the coming days, we will bring to the Security Council a resolution that is proportionate to North Korea’s escalation,” she told the meeting in New York.

While the launch had narrowed the possibility of a diplomatic solution, Haley said the US wanted to avoid military confrontation and its focus was on how to tighten up sanctions, identifying China’s role as key.

“Much of the burden of enforcing UN sanctions rests with China. Ninety per cent of trade with North Korea is from China,” she said.

“We will work with China — we will work with any and every country that believes in peace — but we will not repeat the inadequate approaches of the past that have brought us to this dark day.” Tuesday’s launch — acknowledged as an intercontinental ballistic missile by Washington — marked a milestone in Pyongyang’s decades-long drive for the capability to threaten the US mainland with a nuclear strike, and poses a stark foreign policy challenge for Donald Trump.

While the US push for new sanctions won backing from France, it may well run into Chinese opposition, and raised immediate protests from fellow permanent Security Council member Russia.

“All must acknowledge that sanctions will not resolve the issue,” Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the emergency session, while also warning a military option was “inadmissible.”

The US president had dismissed the idea of the North possessing a working ICBM, vowing it “won’t happen”, but independent experts said the missile could reach Alaska or even further towards the continental US.

Trump has recently used a series of Twitter outbursts to criticise China, the North’s sole major ally and economic lifeline, over its failure to rein in the nuclear-armed state.

In the latest sign of growing friction in US-China relations he lashed out at Beijing on Twitter Wednesday, pointing to a surge in its trade with North Korea as evidence that US reliance on Beijing to pull rank on Pyongyang was misplaced.

The Security Council adopted two sanctions resolutions last year to ramp up pressure on Pyongyang and deny Kim the hard currency needed to fund his military programs.

Those resolutions provided for significant curbs on North Korea’s coal exports, a major source of revenue, and restrictions on banking and mandatory searches of all cargo to and from North Korea.

In all, six sets of sanctions have been imposed on North Korea since it first tested an atomic device in 2006.

Amid international condemnation of the test, South Korean and US military forces launched short-range ballistic missiles of their own into the Sea of Japan less than 24 hours after.

The South’s new President Moon Jae-In, who backs bringing Pyongyang to the negotiating table, said the North’s “serious provocation required us to react with more than just a statement.” The US and South Korea are in a security alliance, with 28,500 US troops stationed in the South to protect it.

Pyongyang says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against the threat of invasion and multiple sets of UN sanctions have failed to halt its atomic and missile programs.

In comments in Berlin ahead of a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Moon said that the international community would look at “ramping up sanctions.”

Moon, who is due to meet Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Thursday evening, said the issue would be in focus during the G20 summit.

After personally overseeing the test, the North’s leader Kim “said American bastards would be not very happy with this gift sent on the July 4 anniversary,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

Questions however remain over the precise capabilities of the Hwasong-14 missile. KCNA said it had a carbon composite nose cone that could carry a “large, heavy nuclear warhead” and survive the harsh conditions of re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere to “accurately hit the target”.

The missile only travelled little more than 900 kilometres (560 miles) to come down in the Sea of Japan, but the altitude it reached — more than 2,800 kilometres according to Pyongyang — demonstrated it can travel far further.

South Korea’s Defence Minister Han Min-koo put its range at 7,000 to 8,000 kilometres — far enough to put US Pacific Command in Hawaii within reach.