US ready to act alone on North Korea threat: Trump

President Donald Trump has said the United States was prepared act alone to eliminate the nuclear threat from North Korea if China, its most important patron, was not willing to use its “great influence” to bring it to heel.

Trump planned to bring up the issue at his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago later this week, he told the Financial Times in an interview.

Trump said: “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.”

With the world watching, including China watchers in India, Trump will be under pressure to be seen talking tough with China — a country with which the US runs a trade deficit of $347 billion and a country that is emerging as a rival global power.

At the same time, the US also expects China to tame North Korea, which has been a source of constant irritation for the new administration — Pyongyang has conducted three missile tests in the last one month. One of them, a medium range missile test, was conducted the day Trump was meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his Florida resort. Tokyo said the timing of the test was “a clear provocation to Japan and the region”.

The Trump administration has already signalled growing impatience with North Korea. Secretary of state Rex Tillersen recently said the US policy of “strategic patience” was over and averred a pre-emptive military action was “an option”.

Asked if he could consider a “grand bargain” with North Korea that could include withdrawing Americans troops from the Korean peninsula, all Trump would say in his interview was, “Well, if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will...That is all I am telling you.” HTC