UNITED NATIONS — Reacting to North Korea’s nuclear test yesterday, members of the Security Council considered a resolution to create an international mechanism to inspect all goods in and out of the hermit tyranny and to ban arms trading with it.

America and Japan led efforts to react quickly to Pyongyang’s atomic test yesterday morning. But while diplomats said the 15 members of the council were united on the need for condemnation and a strong response, it was not clear how strict a punishment North Korea’s main economic benefactor, China, would agree to allow for Kim Jong Il’s regime.

South Korea warned yesterday that its neighbor may soon conduct a second test. At the same time, Seoul’s foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, received an official nod from the Security Council to be its candidate to become Turtle Bay’s chief.

The most innovative component in Washington’s resolution proposal that was circulated to Security Council members last night is based on a three-year-old initiative of the current American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. If adopted, it would mark the first time the council incorporates this American-led inspection and interception regime as a U.N.-sanctioned enforcement tool.

“We did talk about PSI, absolutely,” Mr. Bolton told The New York Sun yesterday. He referred to the Proliferation Security Initiative, launched by the Bush administration in May 2003, described at the time as a “coalition of the willing” of several dozen countries that agree to intercept weapons of mass destruction cargo in international waters.

But it was unclear whether China would agree to the measure — or to any resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, which makes certain punitive measures a mandatory response to an act the council considers a threat to international peace and security. Beyond the PSI-based inspection regime, the American proposal included a ban on trade in military items and luxury goods, as well as in materials that can be used in weapons of mass destruction. It also contained financial and other sanctions. Last night, Japan added to the American proposals several new, tougher elements. The response to Pyongyang’s testing might determine whether the Security Council can prevent a global domino effect of nuclear proliferation, several diplomats said yesterday.

“It’s a message through all of us in the international community that we are all very concerned about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” German ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas Matussek, told the Sun, adding that the message should be “picked up by Iran.”

Germany is a leader in the negotiations with Tehran, which has so far been reluctant to obey the council’s demand to suspend uranium enrichment. But when asked if punitive measures considered now against Pyongyang should also apply to Tehran, Mr. Matussek said,”We are not there yet.” Iran is “a long way off” from testing, he added. Chinese officials were steamed that Pyongyang had defied the council, which only last Friday warned the Kim regime against testing a weapon. But they also urged caution in punishing it.

“The test is a serious challenge,” China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, said, adding that it must be followed by”firm action”by the council. But he also told the council during close-door consultations that the response should be “prudent,”according to a diplomat who described the session on condition of anonymity. Mr. Wang declined answering reporters’ questions about whether China would permit a council resolution under Chapter 7. China would have to accept measures tough enough to “reassure Japan and South Korea,” the two neighbors of North Korea seen as most immediately threatened by the test, a European diplomat told the Sun, asking that he not be named.

South Korea reacted in a much stronger manner to the testing than last July, when Pyongyang launched a missile. Yesterday, it immediately suspended aid shipments to the north. Mr. Ban vowed his country would be “firm and resolute in adhering to the principle of no-tolerance of a nuclear North Korea.”

Diplomats speculated that the timing of Pyongyang’s nuclear test owed as much to Mr. Ban’s coronation yesterday by the council as the man to replace Kofi Annan as U.N. secretary-general on January 1 as to the new government in Japan’s openness to cooperation with its neighbors, South Korea and China.

“This should be a moment of joy, but instead, I stand here with a very heavy heart,” Mr. Ban said, according to the Associated Press.

Mr. Bolton was quick to point out the fact that 61 years after the division of the peninsula after the Korean War, Pyongyang remains isolated while its neighbor becomes the leader of the United Nations. “I can’t think of a better way to show the difference in the progress of those two countries: great progress in the South and great tragedy in the North,” he said.