TRUMP: IT WILL BE DEVASTATING
But use of force not preferred option to deal with N. Korea, says US president
PRESIDENT Donald Trump warned North Korea that any United States military option would be “devastating” for Pyongyang, but said the use of force was not Washington’s first option to deal with the country’s ballistic and nuclear weapons programme.
“We are totally prepared for the second option, not a preferred option,” Trump said on Tuesday at a White House news conference, referring to military force.
“But if we take that option, it will be devastating, I can tell you that, devastating for North Korea. That’s called the military option. If we have to take it, we will.”
Bellicose statements by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in recent weeks have created fears that a miscalculation could lead to action with untold ramifications, particularly since Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept 3.
Despite the increased tension, the US had not detected any change in North Korea’s military posture reflecting an increased threat, the top US military officer said on Tuesday.
The assessment by Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, about Pyongyang’s military stance was in contrast to a South Korean lawmaker who said Pyongyang had boosted defences on its east coast.
“While the political space is clearly very charged right now, we haven’t seen a change in the posture of North Korean forces, and we watch that very closely,” Dunford told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his reappointment to his post.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho on Monday accused Trump of declaring war on the North and threatened that Pyongyang would shoot down US warplanes flying near the Korean peninsula after US bombers flew close to it last Saturday.
Ri was reacting to Trump’s Twitter comments that Kim and Ri “won’t be around much longer ” if they acted on their threats toward the US.
North Korea has been working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the US mainland, which Trump had said he would never allow.
Dunford said Pyongyang would have a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile “soon”, and it was only a matter of a “very short time”.
“We clearly have postured our forces to respond in the event of a provocation or a conflict,” he said, adding that the US had taken “all proper measures to protect our allies”, including South Korea and Japan.
South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol-uoo, briefed by the country’s spy agency, said North Korea was bolstering its defences by moving aircraft to its east coast and taking other measures after the flight by US bombers.
He said the US appeared to have disclosed the flight route intentionally because North Korea seemed to be unaware.
The US had also imposed sanctions on 26 people as part of its non-proliferation designations for North Korea and nine banks, including some with ties to China, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control Sanctions said on Tuesday.
The US sanctions target people in North Korea and some North Korean nationals in China, Russia, Libya and United Arab Emirates’ city of Dubai, according to a list on the agency’s website.
The US State Department also said on Tuesday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would visit China from today to Saturday for talks with senior officials that would include the crisis over North Korea and trade.
Evans Revere, a former senior diplomat who met a North Korean delegation in Switzerland this month, said Pyongyang had been reaching out to “organisations and individuals” to encourage talks with former US officials to get a sense of the Trump administration’s thinking.
“They’ve also been accepting invitations to attend dialogues hosted by others, including the Swiss and the Russians.”
He said his best guess for why North Koreans were doing this was because they were “puzzled by the unconventional way that President Trump has been handling the North Korea issue” and were eager to use “informal and unofficial meetings to gain a better understanding of what is motivating Trump and his administration”. Reuters