N. Korea flaunts ballistic missiles

No winners if war breaks out: Chinese FM

PYONGYANG, North Korea, April 15: (AP): North Korea paraded its intercontinental ballistic missiles in a massive military display in central Pyongyang on Saturday, with ruler Kim Jong Un looking on with delight as his nation flaunted its increasingly sophisticated military hardware amid rising regional tensions.

Kim did not speak during the annual parade, which celebrates the 1912 birthday of his late grandfather Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founding ruler, but a top official warned that the North would stand up to any threat posed by the United States.

Choe Ryong Hae said President Donald Trump was guilty of “creating a war situation” on the Korean Peninsula by dispatching US forces to the region.

“We will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear war with our style of a nuclear attack,” said Choe, widely seen by analysts as North Korea’s No. 2 official.

The parade, the annual highlight of North Korea’s most important holiday, came amid growing international worries that North Korea may be preparing for its sixth nuclear test or a major missile launch, such as its first flight test of an ICBM capable of reaching US shores.

But if the parade signaled a readiness for war, North Korea has long insisted that its goal is peace — and survival — with the growing arsenal a way to ensure that the government in Pyongyang is not easily overthrown.

North Korea saw the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya — neither of whom had nuclear weapons — as proof of the weapons’ power.

“It will be the largest of miscalculations if the United States treats us like Iraq and Libya, which are living out miserable fates as victims of aggression, and Syria, which didn’t respond immediately even after it was attacked,” said a Friday statement by the general staff of the North Korean army, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Also Friday, North Korea’s vice foreign minister told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that Trump’s tweets — he recently tweeted, for example, that the North is “looking for trouble” — have inflamed tensions.

“Trump is always making provocations with his aggressive words,” Han Song Ryol said.

US retaliatory strikes earlier this month against Syria over a chemical weapons attack on civilians, coupled with Trump’s dispatching of what he WASHINGTON, April 15, (AP): The Trump administration has settled on its North Korea strategy after a twomonth review: “Maximum pressure and engagement.”

US officials said Friday the president’s advisers weighed a range of ideas for how to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, including military options and trying to overthrow the isolated communist dictatorship’s leadership. At the other end of the spectrum, they looked at the notion of accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.

In the end, however, they settled on a policy that appears to represent continuity.

The administration’s emphasis, the officials said, will be on increasing pressure on Pyongyang with the help of China, North Korea’s dominant trade partner. The officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the results of the policy review and requested anonymity.

The new strategy will be deployed at a time of escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula. US, South Korean and other officials are closely monitoring the North amid indications it could conduct another missile test or nuclear explosion to coincide with an important national anniversary this weekend.

Pyongyang has undertaken five nuclear tests since 2006.

An influential Washington think tank estimated Friday that North Korea could already have up to 30 bombs.

The Institute for Science and International Security cited a worrying increase in North Korea’s nuclear program, but said the arsenal may only have been as large as 13 atomic weapons at the end of 2016. Its research suggested a range between

called an “armada” of ships to the region, touched off fears in South Korea that the United States was preparing for military action against the North.

Pyongyang has also expressed anger over the ongoing annual spring military exercises the US holds with South Korea, which it considers a rehearsal for invasion.

Meanwhile, there can be no winners in a war between the US and North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile programs, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, while pledging support for dialogue between the sides.

10 and 16 such weapons two years earlier. The institute’s estimates are based on what it believes the North has produced in plutonium and weapons-grade uranium. The margins represent uncertainty as to whether North Korea has one or two uranium enrichment facilities.

The North has owned up to one such facility, at its Nyongbyon nuclear complex, but the US government assumes it has more.

“The bottom line is that North Korea has an improving nuclear weapons arsenal,” said David Albright, the institute’s president.

He said the North may have a handful of plutonium-based warheads it can mount on mediumrange ballistic missiles capable of reaching South Korea and Japan. But it’s doubtful the North is currently able to build reliable, survivable warheads for an intercontinental ballistic missile that can strike the US mainland, he said.

As for the Trump administration’s policy, the US officials emphasized that no engagement of North Korea is currently taking place. Although China advocates for diplomatic outreach, the focus for now is on pressure.

The officials said the goal of engagement would have to be North Korea’s denuclearization. It cannot lead to an arms control agreement or reduction of the North’s atomic arsenal that would imply American acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear power.

The officials are hopeful China and Russia would agree to tighter UN sanctions on North Korea if it conducts another nuclear test. They pointed to a recent editorial in a state-run Chinese newspaper advocating tighter restrictions on selling oil to North Korea.

Wang’s comments Friday mark the latest attempt to cool tensions by North Korea’s most important ally and key provider of food and fuel aid. Any fighting on the Korean Peninsula is likely to draw in China, which has repeatedly expressed concerns about a wave of refugees and the possible presence of US and South Korean troops on its border.

China also has grown increasingly frustrated with the refusal of Kim Jong Un’s regime to heed its admonitions, and in February cut off imports of North Korean coal that provide Pyongyang with a crucial source of foreign currency.