‘TALK IS NOT THE ANSWER’

PRESIDENT Donald Trump says “talking is not the answer” to the tense stand-off with North Korea over its nuclear missile development, but his defence chief swiftly asserted that the US still has diplomatic options.

Trump’s comment, a day after Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile over Japan that drew UN and other international condemnation, renewed his tough rhetoric towards North Korea.

“The US has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Talking is not the answer!” When asked by reporters just hours later if the US was out of diplomatic solutions with North Korea amid rising tensions after a series of missile tests by Pyongyang, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis replied: “No.” “We are never out of diplomatic solutions,”

North Korea said the launch of an intermediaterange ballistic missile on Tuesday was to counter US and South Korean military drills and was a first step in military action in the Pacific to “containing” the US island territory of Guam.

The latest tweet by the Republican US president drew criticism from some quarters in Washington. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote on Twitter: “Bar is high, but this is perhaps the most dangerous, irresponsible tweet of his entire Presidency. Millions of lives at stake - not a game.”

The controversy came as the US Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency and the crew of the USS John Paul Jones conducted a “complex missile defence flight test” off Hawaii, resulting in the intercept of a medium-range ballistic missile target, the agency said.