North Korea fired two short-range missiles at the weekend, US and South Korean officials said, but Washington played down the first such tests under President Joe Biden and said it was still open to dialogue with Pyongyang. 

The North Korean activity involved weapons systems at the low end of the spectrum that were not covered by UN Security Council testing bans, two senior officials of the Biden administration told a briefing call on Tuesday.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said two cruise missiles were fired off North Korea's western coastal town of Onchon on Sunday morning. The launch marks North Korea's first publicly known weapons test since Biden took office in January.

But Biden downplayed the latest activity, saying "nothing much has changed," while one senior official said it was "normal" testing and warned against "hyping" it.

The test came just days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed to work to denuclearize North Korea and criticized its "systemic and widespread" human rights abuses while in Seoul with the US Defense Secretary.

The senior US officials said the administration's North Korea policy review was in its "final stages" and would host the national security advisers of allies Japan and South Korea next week to discuss that.

EU NATIONS REBUKE CHINA ENVOYS

France, Germany and other EU nations called in Chinese ambassadors on Tuesday to protest at sanctions imposed by Beijing targeting their citizens, as China and Europe faced off over claims of rights abuses against China's Muslim Uyghur minority.

The diplomatic spat erupted after the EU, Britain and Canada on Monday blacklisted four former and current officials in the Xinjiang region, while Washington, which had already sanctioned two of those officials in July 2020, extended them to the two others.  China responded with entry bans on 10 Europeans -- including five members of the European Parliament -- as well as two EU bodies and two think-tanks.