US challenged by North Korea, Russia urges calm

UNITED NATIONS Sept 23 (Reuters) - Russia urged “hot heads” to calm down on Friday as the US admitted it felt “challenged” by North Korea’s warning that it could test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific and President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un traded more insults.

Trump called the North Korean leader a “madman” on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a “mentally deranged US dotard” who would face the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” in retaliation for Trump saying the US would “totally destroy” North Korea if it threatened the US or its allies.

“We have to calm down the hot heads,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters at the UN, where world leaders gathered this week for the annual General Assembly. “We continue to strive for the reasonable and not the emotional approach...of the kindergarten fight between children.”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed hope that sanctions and “voices from every corner of the world” could lead North Korea back to talks, but admitted intensifying rhetoric had left Washington “quite challenged.”

North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, warned that Kim could consider a hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific.

In response, Tillerson said US diplomatic efforts would continue but all military options were still on the table.

North Korea’s six nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test would be proof of the success of its weapons programme.

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington was taking Kim’s threat seriously and added that any atmospheric test would be a “game-changer.”

But he said there were questions about North Korea’s technical capabilities and Washington did not give “too much credence” to Pyongyang taking such action. “There’s a certain amount of bluster that’s taken for granted when you’re dealing with North Korea,” the official told Reuters.

Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3

SHANGHAI, Sept 23 (Reuters) - China said on Saturday it will ban exports of some petroleum products to North Korea, as well as imports of textiles from the isolated North, to comply with a UN Security Council resolution.

The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website that China would limit exports of refined petroleum products from Oct. 1, and ban exports of condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately. Imports of textiles from North Korea would also be banned immediately, the statement said. and has launched dozens of missiles this year as it accelerates a programme aimed at enabling it to target the US with a nuclear-tipped missile.

Lavrov on Friday again pushed a proposal by Moscow and Beijing for a dual suspension of North Korean weapons tests and the US-South Korean military drills to kick-start talks. Lavrov suggested that a neutral European country could mediate.

He described the exchange of insults between the US and North Korean leaders was “quite bad, unacceptable.”

The latest round of rhetoric began on Tuesday when Trump, in his first address to the UN, made the threat to destroy North Korea, a country of 26 million people. He also called Kim a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.

“His remarks ... have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last,” Kim said in the statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency on Friday.

Japan, the only country to suffer an atomic attack, called the North Korean threat to conduct an atmospheric test “totally unacceptable”.

The rhetoric has started to rattle some in other countries. French Sports Minister Laura Flessel said France’s team would not travel to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea if its security could not be guaranteed.

The 2018 Games are to be staged in Pyeongchang, just 80 km from the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the world’s most heavily armed border.

We continue to strive for the reasonable and not the emotional approach... of the kindergarten fight between children