BY JEREMY CORBYN

move towards essential de-escalation and demilitarisation.

We cannot play fast and loose with nuclear weapons and nuclear threats.

Our government must press for measured responses to bring the temperature down.

Sanctions, which the UN security council stepped up on North Korea last week, will not alone resolve the tensions. Diplomacy, security guarantees, and international law are the only realistic route out of the crisis.

Britain can help pull this back from the brink by pushing hard for the resumption of the stalled six-party talks. That must involve both South Korea and Japan to be effective and have the clear objective of a denuclearised Korean Peninsula.

At the six-party talks in 2007, North Korea signed an agreement to disable its CANDLES OF HOPE nuclear weapons facilities. Ten years on, what incentive does Pyongyang have to come back to the negotiating table?

The scaling back of US and South Korean military exercises in exchange for North Korea agreeing to freeze its nuclear programme can be the basis of an offer to reopen talks, with the support of China and Russia.

North Korea cannot sustain current levels of military spending and meet its people’s basic needs. So the chance of more open trade and agreements are another lever for de-escalation and a negotiated settlement.

Our government must not drag our country into any military action over the Korea crisis, including joint exercises. There can be no question of blind loyalty to the erratic and belligerent Trump administration. US-led regime-change wars and the threat of more to come have made this crisis more dangerous and difficult to resolve.

A Labour government would be committed to achieving a nuclear-free world, as are all signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

We can only head off the spread of nuclear weapons if existing nuclear states make meaningful moves towards disarmament. Labour’s shadow peace and disarmament minister Fabian Hamilton would be dedicated to this task.

In the interests of sanity and safety for the whole world, global pressure for dialogue and diplomacy must be overwhelming.