North Korea missile test shows threat to U.S. 'not a bluff' - Russian lawmaker

MOSCOW (Reuters) - North Korea's latest missile test shows its threat to fire four missiles into the waters near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam was not a bluff, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Tuesday. Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile over Japan's northern Hokkaido island into the sea early on Tuesday. The test, one of the most provocative ever from the reclusive state, appeared to have been of a recently developed intermediate-range Hwasong-12 missile, experts said. "Alas, Pyongyang has demonstrated that its threats to the U.S. base on Guam are not a bluff," Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the upper house of parliament's international affairs committee, said on social media. Kosachev also said that a United Nations Security Council resolution regarding North Korea's missile programme which passed this month had failed to achieve its objective, "because the situation has turned into a bilateral standoff between North Korea and the United States". (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Andrew Osborn)