Mattis says US can’t accept nuclear North

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Saturday that he could not imagine United States ever accepting a nuclear North Korea, warning that its rapidly advancing nuclear and missile programs would undermine, not strengthen, its security.jgs

Mattis has been at pains during his week-long trip to Asia to stress that diplomacy is America’s preferred course, a message he returned to after top-level military talks in Seoul on Saturday and at the tense border area with North Korea on Friday.

Still, he warned Pyongyang that its military was no match for the US-South Korean alliance, and that diplomacy was most effective “when backed by credible military force.”

“Make no mistake - any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated. And any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is both effective and overwhelming,” Mattis said.

Mattis’s South Korean counterpart, Defense Minister Song Young-moo, dismissed the idea of deploying tactical nuclear weapons to the peninsula as a response to the North’s advances.But the US-Korean alliance had the ability to respond, even in the event of a nuclear attack from the North, Song added.

Tension between North Korea and the United States has been building after a series of nuclear and missile tests by Pyongyang and bellicose verbal exchanges between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump.

The CIA has said North Korea could be only months away from developing the ability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons, a scenario Trump has vowed to prevent.Mattis, too, said Kim’s behavior had left no room to imagine accepting Pyongyang’s nuclear status. “I cannot imagine a condition under which the United States can accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” Mattis told a news conference.

The Spanish government on Saturday handed temporary control of Catalonia to Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria after it stripped the region of its autonomy, the media reported.

The measures came after the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence on Friday, reports the BBC.

Soon after the Catalan parliament’s move, the Spanish Senate granted Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government the power to impose direct rule on the region which held an independence referendum on 1 October. It was deemed illegal by the Spanish Constitution.

The Spanish government published an official bulletin earlier on Saturday stating that it has dismissed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, his deputy Oriol Junqueras and all government members.

The announcement came hours after the Madrid government on Friday night removed Josep Lluís Trapero Alvarez as chief of Catalonia’s autonomous Mossos police force.

Sacked Catalan president