Top general warns North Korea: ‘US military is ready’

America’s top military officer has told his counterparts in South Korea that the United States is ready to use the “full range” of its military capabilities to defend itself and its allies from any North Korean provocation.

Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting South Korea, Japan and China after a week in which President Donald Trump traded threats with North Korea.

Mr Trump had declared the US military “locked and loaded” and said he was ready to unleash “fire and fury” if North Korea continues to threaten America.

North Korea, meanwhile, has threatened to fire four intermediate-range missiles into the waters near Guam, a tiny US territory about 2,000 miles from Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.

This would be a deeply provocative act, from the US perspective, and there has been widespread debate about whether Washington would try to shoot the missiles down if they are launched.

The Us-north Korean standoff, which has simmered since the end of the Korean War in 1953, has grown more tense in recent months over worries that the North’s nuclear weapons programme is nearing the ability to target the US mainland.

Pyongyang tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles last month.

Gen Dunford, who met senior South Korean military officials and the country’s president, Moon Jae-in, “stressed that North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs threaten the entire global community,” according to US military spokesman Captain Darryn James.

“He conveyed America’s readiness to use the full range of military capabilities to defend our allies and the US homeland,” Capt James said.

Mr Moon separately called for a peaceful solution to the nuclear stand-off, saying that “there must not be another war on the Korean Peninsula”.

In a meeting with top aides at the presidential Blue House, Mr Moon said South Korea would work to safeguard peace on the peninsula in cooperation with the United States and other countries.

Mr Moon said North Korea must stop issuing menacing statements.

North Korea, which is angry over new United Nations sanctions condemning its rapidly developing nuclear and missile programme, continued its tough stance yesterday.

The North accused the US of mobilising a huge number of weapons and troops for annual military drills with South Korea that begin later this month.