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 Sunday's launch of what North Korea said was an earth observation
satellite angered the country's neighbors and the United States,
which called it a missile test. It followed Pyongyang's fourth
nuclear test in January.
"It's in a stable orbit now. They got the tumbling under control," a
U.S. official said on Tuesday.
That is unlike the North's previous satellite, launched in 2012,
which never stabilized, the official said. However, the new
satellite was not thought to be transmitting, another source added.
U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with the leaders of South Korea
and Japan by phone on Monday night and reassured them of
Washington's support, while also calling for a strong international
response to the launch, the White House said.
Obama will also address North Korea's "provocations" when he hosts
the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in
California early next week, aides said.
The United States and China, Pyongyang's only major ally, are
negotiating the outline of a new U.N. sanctions resolution that
diplomats hope will be adopted this month.
 The U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions against North Korea
for its nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches dating back to
2006, banning arms trade and money flow that can fund the country's
arms program.
But a confidential U.N. report, seen by Reuters, concluded that
North Korea continues to export ballistic-missile technology to the
Middle East and ship arms and materiel to Africa in violation of
U.N. restrictions.
The report by the U.N. Security Council's Panel of Experts on North
Korea, which monitors implementation of sanctions, said there were
"serious questions about the efficacy of the current United Nations
sanctions regime."
Western diplomats told Reuters that restricting North Korean access
to international ports is among the measures Washington is pushing
Beijing to accept in the wake of the Jan. 6 nuclear test and the
weekend rocket launch.
"PROVOCATIVE, DISTURBING AND ALARMING"
Missile experts say North Korea appears to have repeated its earlier
success in putting an object into space, rather than broken new
ground. It used a nearly identical design to the 2012 launch and is
probably years away from building a long-range nuclear missile, the
experts said.
Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the U.S. Missile Defense
Agency, told reporters that North Korea's launch was "provocative,
disturbing and alarming," but could not be equated with a test of an
intercontinental ballistic missile.
He said North Korea had never attempted to flight test the KN-08
intercontinental ballistic missile it is developing.
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Syring said U.S. missile defenses would be able to defend against
the new North Korean missile given efforts to improve the
reliability of the U.S. system and increase in the number of
ground-based U.S. interceptors from 30 to 44.
"I'm very confident that we're, one, ahead of it today, and that the
funded improvements will keep us ahead of ... where it may be by
2020," he said.
The latest North Korea rocket was based on engines taken from its
massive stockpile of mid-range missiles based on Soviet-era
technology and electrical parts too rudimentary to be targeted by a
global missile control regime, experts said.
South Korea's defense ministry believes the three-stage rocket,
named Kwangmyongsong, had a potential range of 12,000 km (7,457
miles), Yonhap news agency reported, similar to that of the 2012
rocket and putting the U.S. mainland in reach.
"I suspect the aim of the launch was to repeat the success, which
itself provides considerable engineering knowledge," said Michael
Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies.
Separately, U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper said
on Tuesday that North Korea could begin to recover plutonium from a
restarted nuclear reactor within weeks.
Clapper said that in 2013, following its third nuclear test, the
North had announced its intention to "refurbish and restart"
facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.
"We assess that North Korea has followed through on its announcement
by expanding its Yongbyon enrichment facility and restarting the
plutonium production reactor," Clapper said in prepared testimony to
the Senate Armed Services Committee.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols at
the United Nations and Irene Klotz, Susan Heavey and Matt
Spetalnick; Writing by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Dean Yates)
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