Australia will work through the United Nations to respond to any missile launch from North Korea, says Defence Minister Brendan Nelson.
In Washington for meetings with top US officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Dr Nelson has canvassed a range of issues, including relations with Stalinist North Korea.
North Korea has threatened to launch a missile across Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.
"If the missile is, however, launched at some point, naturally we would expect that the world would respond by dealing with it appropriately," Dr Nelson told ABC radio today.
"We would express our views through the United Nations."
The minister refused to be drawn on the use of economic sanctions, saying the world must be mindful of the immense suffering North Korean people were under.
"If you look at the Korean peninsula when the sun goes down, all the lights are on in the South and not much is happening to the North and there are people who are starving to death in North Korea as its leadership fiddles around with a possible missile launch."
Dr Nelson called on North Korea's closest ally China to become more involved in exerting diplomatic pressure.
"I think the most important thing is world pressure, particularly from the United Nations and countries such as the United States and hopefully also China needs to be brought to bare on North Korea to see plain commonsense."
Dr Nelson refused to be drawn on a suggestion by a former White House official that the US should launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.
"Let's not talk about hypothetical things here at the moment, I don't think anybody is talking about some sort of pre-emptive strike which would quite rightly be seen as a hostile act against North Korea," Dr Nelson said.
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