Nato chief calls North Korea ‘global threat’ Stoltenberg backs tighter sanctions against Pyongyang over its ‘nukes’ ‘North Korea nuke test risks radiation leak’
Tokyo, Oct. 30: Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg called North Korea a “global threat” on Monday and said that he backed tighter sanctions against it during a visit to Japan, which has been targeted by Pyongyang’s provocations.
Stoltenberg is in Tokyo to meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other senior officials including defence minister Itsunori Onodera later in the day.
“We are as concerned as you are about the provocative, reckless behaviour from North Korea,” he said in a speech to a group of security experts and defence officials.
“It is really dangerous, it poses a direct threat to countries in this region (including) Japan, but it is also a global threat,” he added.
Pyongyang has sparked global alarm in recent months by conducting its sixth nuclear test and testlaunching missiles capable of reaching the US mainland, while US president Donald Trump and the North’s young ruler Kim Jong-Un have traded threats of war and personal insults.
It fired two projectiles over northern Japan in less than a month, ringing alarm bells in Tokyo as Abe called for a get-tough approach towards Pyongyang.
“Nato strongly support political, diplomatic, economic pressure on North Korea and we welcome the strengthening of the sanctions” adopted by the UN Security September, said.
“But even more important, we need to be sure that the sanctions are fully and transparently implemented,” he added. Council in Stoltenberg Seoul, Oct. 30: South Korea says any future nuclear test by North Korea risks collapsing its mountain test site and triggering a radiation leak.
South Korea’s weather agency chief Nam JaeCheol made the comments on Monday during a parliament committee meeting. He was responding to a lawmaker’s question about whether another North Korean test could lead to such an accident.
South Korea detected several earthquakes near the North’s nuclear test site in the country’s northeast after its sixth and most powerful bomb explosion in September.
Experts say the quakes suggest the area is now too unstable to conduct more tests there.