Kim stresses "military first" in debut speech Kim Jong-eun, North Korea's youthful leader, has used his first publicly televised speech to dismiss US suggestions that Pyongyang should stop wasting money on weapons, even though its latest long-range rocket disintegrated shortly after blast-off on Friday Barack Obama, US president, said North Korea's leaders should spend money on the starving population rather than ballistics. "They don't seem real good at it," he quipped to the Spanish-language Telemundo network after Pyongyang failed to put a satellite in orbit for the third time. Mr Obama's laconic tone was bound to sting a leadership that defines itself through an ideology of "military first" just as it celebrated Sunday's 100th anniversary of the birthday of Kim Il-sung, founder of the nation. The rocket launch was supposed to be the centrepiece of Sunday's festivities, the most important in the country's history. Kim Jong-eun, with a haircut and Mao suit reminiscent of those sported by Kim Il-sung, addressed thousands of soldiers to insist Pyongyang would never retreat on policies favouring the one million-strong army, which was the nation's "first, second and third" priority. He insisted North Korea had broken foreign powers" monopoly on military technology and proclaimed: "On to ultimate victory!." The troops chanted back: "Long Life!" to the leader who is only in his late 20s and came to power four months ago after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il. Mr Kim spoke evenly but seemed nervous, buried in notes behind a bank of microphones. Visibly relaxing after his big debut, he laughed and chatted with commanders on a balcony overlooking Pyongyang's main square. His speech was the first occasion most North Koreans would have heard his voice. Looking to restore military prestige, experts say Pyongyang will be deliberating whether to make amends for Friday's failure by announcing a nuclear bomb test using plutonium, which it has used in the past, or uranium, which would suggest its technical abilities are improving. It conducted tests with plutonium in 2006 and 2009 and satellite photographs have shown the closed dictatorship appears to be excavating ground for a third blast near the Chinese border. Some international observers say North Korea could seek to alarm the international community by claiming the third test was conducted with uranium. Such an announcement would greatly escalate fears about Pyongyang's know-how. Until late 2010, intelligence agencies reckoned North Korea's uranium enrichment facilities were embryonic. Siegfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, undermined this view when North Korea invited him to view more than 1,000 enrichment centrifuges at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. While a uranium test would certainly escalate tensions, Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said it could also backfire. He argued a third plutonium blast was more likely. "Testing a highly-enriched uranium device would catch them in another big lie, since they are maintaining that the uranium enrichment effort is strictly for peaceful energy purposes," he said. Even the Chinese, who have thus far handled the North's violations with kid gloves, would have to respond strongly to an HEU-based nuclear test. On Sunday China called for restraint from all sides and revealed that Yang Jiechi, foreign Minister, had spoken to Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, and South Korean foreign minister Kim Sung-hwan following Friday's failed missile launch. Additional reporting Leslie Hook, Beijing