The UN Security Council will hold closed-door consultations to discuss a possible condemnation of North Korea's latest ballistic missile launches, UN diplomats said.

The request for a special session on North Korea came from the United States, council diplomats told the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity on Wednesday. The meeting of the 15-nation council was scheduled for 21:00GMT on Thursday.

Such launches are contrary to building trust in the region. The Secretary-General urges the DPRK [North Korea] to cease its ballistic missile activities. Office of Ban Ki-moon,

UN secretary-general

In what appeared to be a show of defiance, North Korea fired two medium-range Rodong ballistic missiles into the sea at 2:35am Japan and Korea time (17:35 GMT Tuesday), both Tokyo and Seoul said.

North Korea's first firing in four years of mid-range Rodong missiles that can hit Japan followed a series of short-range rocket launches over the past two months.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's press office issued a statement condemning the latest missile launch.

"Such launches are contrary to building trust in the region. The Secretary-General urges the DPRK [North Korea] to cease its ballistic missile activities and focus, together with other countries concerned, on the dialogue and diplomacy necessary to maintain regional peace and security," the statement said.

Council diplomats said Washington was expected to propose a Security Council statement that would condemn the missile firings. It was not clear whether China, Pyongyang's protector on the council, would support such a condemnation, though it has been willing to back rebukes of Pyongyang in the past.

Deputy US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on Tuesday, "We are closely coordinating with our allies and partners, including in the UN Security Council, to take the appropriate measures in response to this latest provocation and to address the threat to global security posed by the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes."

There is also a possibility, the diplomats said, of the Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee eventually expanding the current UN blacklist to include additional North Korean entities involved in Pyongyang's missile programme.

Expansion of the blacklist would take more time and was not expected to be decided on Thursday, the diplomats said.

According to diplomats, ballistic missile launches are banned under UN Security Council resolutions adopted in response to North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests and subsequent rocket firings.

Those resolutions imposed a series of UN sanctions on Pyongyang that target the country's missile and nuclear programmes and attempt to punish North Korea's reclusive leadership through a ban on luxury goods.