N Korea begging for war: Haley
ESCALATION US envoy to UN calls for diplomacy as S Korea says Pyongyang may test another missile
: North Korea’s president, Kim Jong Un, “is begging for war,” Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council on Monday.
Her remark came a day after the North’s most powerful nuclear test, and hours after South Korean officials told lawmakers that North Korea may be making preparations to launch another ballistic missile to mark a national holiday over the coming weekend.
“We have kicked the can down the road long enough,” Haley told the council in an emergency meeting. “There is no more road left.”
But Haley did not threaten unilateral military action by Washington, or repeat President Donald Trump’s statement on Twitter that South Korea’s call for more diplomacy was a form of “appeasement.” Haley said instead that “the time has come for us to exhaust all of our diplomatic means before it’s too late.”
It was the second time in less than a week that the Security Council has met to discuss North Korea, and the 10th time it has done so this year.
The council appeared not to have many more options than it did just six days earlier, when it condemned the North’s tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one that soared over Japan.
“We are alarmed by this dangerous provocation,” Jeffrey Feltman, a US diplomat who is the UN undersecretary-general for political affairs, told the council on Monday. “This act is also profoundly destabilising for regional and international security.”
In her speech to the council, Haley ticked off a lengthy summary of the North’s flouting of international law since 1993, when the United Nations urged the North to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
“Despite our efforts over the past 24 years, the North Korean nuclear programme is more advanced and more dangerous than ever,” she said.
“They now fire missiles over Japanese airspace. They now have ICBM capabilities. They now claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb.
“And just this morning there are reports that the regime is preparing for yet another ICBM launch.”
Although experts do not agree on Kim’s precise motivations, Haley said “he wants to be acknowledged as a nuclear power,” which she said was unacceptable.