N. Korea decries U.S. carrier dispatch as parliament meets

PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea’s parliament convened Tuesday amid heightened tensions on the divided peninsula, with the United States and South Korea conducting their biggestever military exercises and the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier heading to the area in a show of American strength.

North Korea vowed a tough response to any military moves that might follow the U.S. decision to send the carrier and its battle group to waters off the Korean Peninsula.

“We will hold the U.S. wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions,” a spokesman for its Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The statement followed an assertion by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that U.S. missile strikes against a Syrian air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack carry a message for any nation operating outside international norms. He didn’t specify North Korea, but the context was clear enough.

“If you violate international agreements, if you fail to live up to commitments, if you become a threat to others, at some point a response is likely to be undertaken,” Tillerson told ABC’s “This Week.”

Pyongyang is always extremely sensitive to the annual U.S.-South Korea war games, which it sees as an invasion rehearsal, and justifies its nuclear weapons as defensive in nature. It has significantly turned up the volume of its rhetoric that war could be on the horizon if it sees any signs of aggression from south of the Demilitarized Zone.

“This goes to prove that the U.S. reckless moves for invading the DPRK have reached a serious phase of its scenario,” the North’s statement said, referring to the country by its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “If the U.S. dares opt for a military action, crying out for ‘pre-emptive attack’ … the DPRK is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S.”

In Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump has been very clear that it’s “not tolerable” for North Korea to have nucleararmed missiles.

“The last thing we want to see is a nuclear North Korea that threatens the coast of the United States, or, for that matter, any other country, or any other set of human beings,” Spicer said at the Tuesday news briefing.