Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
North Korea warned about nuclear testing
Strike force heads toward peninsula amid Kim defiance
U.S. aircraft carrier strike force is diverted toward the Korean Peninsula.
WASHINGTON — Pivoting off what the White House considers a successful U.S. missile strike in Syria, the Trump administration sent a not-so-subtle message Sunday to North Korea: Don’t risk being next.
With growing signs that Pyongyang may be preparing a sixth nuclear test, a U.S. aircraft carrier strike force near Singapore was diverted north toward the Korean Peninsula, President Donald Trump spoke to leaders in Tokyo and Seoul, and senior administration officials made pointed note of the “full range of options” available to counter threats to the United States or its allies.
The flurry of action centering on North Korea comes on the heels of Trump’s two-day summit in Florida last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders publicly played down their economic and political disputes and addressed their common interest in reining in North Korea’s mercurial leader, Kim Jong Un.
Pyongyang has repeatedly warned that it aims to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, or conduct another underground nuclear test. Analysts say one could come as soon as Saturday, the 105th birthday of North Korea’s founding president and celebrated annually as the “Day of the Sun.”
The spotlight’s turn from Syria to North Korea carries benefits as well as risks for the Trump administration, now nearing its 100-day mark.
With a limited but decisive response to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s alleged use of banned sarin nerve gas on Syrian civilians, Trump won plaudits from previously skeptical U.S. allies in Europe, as well as from some of his harshest critics at home.
But even as Trump basked in generally favorable reviews of the first direct U.S. military strike aimed at Assad, the president and his lieutenants seemed far less eager to engage in knotty, longer-term policy questions about the grinding, multi-sided Syrian war, now in its seventh year.
With North Korea, the underlying issues are just as complex, but the threat of a nuclear conflict — or even a devastating conventional military attack on South Korea and Japan — makes the stakes far higher.
Perhaps mindful of parallels that could be drawn over defiance of international norms, North Korea denounced the U.S. missile strike on Syria as “intolerable,” and reiterated its own right to self-defense.
The U.S. Navy’s 3rd Fleet, in turn, announced that the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and a strike force that includes guidedmissile warships were being diverted from scheduled port calls in Australia to “maintain readiness and presence in the western Pacific.”
“The No. 1 threat in the region continues to be North Korea due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability,” U.S. Pacific Command spokesman Dave Benham told reporters.
North Korea has a history of defying attempts to prevent it from developing nuclear arms in conjunction with its growing ballisticmissile capabilities.
Kim’s government has conducted five underground nuclear tests and is working to develop ballistic missiles that ultimately could deliver a warhead to U.S. territory.
“If we judge that they have perfected that type of delivery system, then that becomes a very serious stage of their further development,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Japan has been rattled by North Korea’s recent testfirings of short and medium-range missiles in its direction.
The latest test came a month after Pyongyang simultaneously launched four medium-range missiles into the ocean in what it said was proof it could hit U.S. military bases in Japan.
On Sunday, the White House announced Trump had spoken by phone with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about Syria and “a range of regional issues, including the threat posed by North Korea.”
A similar phone call took place Friday with South Korea’s acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, the White House said.
Adding to the barrage of cautionary language aimed at Pyonyang, Tillerson framed the Syria missile strike as a more general warning against international outliers.
“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,” he said.
The White House national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, cited a “pattern of provocative behavior” on North Korea’s part.
“This is a rogue regime that is now a nuclear-capable regime,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
McMaster said that Trump had asked aides to prepare “a full range of options to remove that threat to the American people and to our allies and partners in the region.”
North Korea denounced what it called Washington’s “reckless moves” toward war, according to a statement carried by its official Korean Central News Agency.