Trump’s tweets seen as adding fuel to tension
Ready to strike, says North Korea
PYONGYANG: President Donald Trump’s tweets are adding fuel to a “vicious cycle” of tension on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea’s Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol says.
If the US showed any sign of “reckless” military aggression, Pyongyang was ready to launch a pre-emptive strike of its own, he said.
Han said Pyongyang had determined the Trump administration was “more vicious and more aggressive” than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
He added that North Korea would keep building up its nuclear arsenal in “quality and quantity” and Pyongyang was ready to go to war if that is what Trump wanted.
Tension between Pyongyang and Washington goes back to President Harry Truman and the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. But the heat has been rising rapidly since Trump took office in January.
This year’s joint war games between the US and South Korean militaries are the biggest; the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier has been diverted back to the waters off Korea after heading for Australia; and US satellite imagery suggests the North could conduct another underground nuclear test at any time.
P yo n g ya n g recently launched a long-range ballistic missile and claims it is close to perfecting an intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear warhead that could attack the US mainland.
Many experts believe that at its current pace of testing, North Korea could reach that potentially game-changing milestone within a few years – under Trump’s watch as president. Despite reports that Washington is considering military action if the North goes ahead with another nuclear test, Han did not rule out the possibility of a test in the near future.
“That is something that our headquarters decides,” he said during the 40-minute interview in Pyongyang, which was gearing up for a major holiday – and possibly a big military parade – today.
“At a time and at a place where the headquarters deems necessary, it will take place.”
The North conducted two such tests last year alone.
The first was of what it claims to have been a hydrogen bomb and the second was its most powerful.
The annual US-South Korea military exercises have consistently infuriated the North, which views them as rehearsals for an invasion.
Washington and Seoul deny that, but reports that exercises have included “decapitation strikes” aimed at the North’s leadership have fanned Pyongyang’s anger.
Han said Trump’s tweets had also added fuel to the flames.
Trump posted a tweet on Tuesday in which he said the North was “looking for trouble” and reiterated his call for more pressure from Beijing, North Korea’s economic lifeline, to clamp down on trade and strengthen its enforcement of UN sanctions to persuade Pyongyang to denuclearise.
Trump has threatened that if Beijing is not willing to do more to squeeze the North, the US might take the matter into its own hands. – AP