US warns N Korea: We’ll shoot down your test missiles
THE US military could shoot down North Korea test missiles in a show of strength, it was claimed yesterday.
Sources said the Pentagon was looking for ways to pressure the country into stopping its provocative nuclear programme and tests without an all-out war.
US defence secretary James Mattis has briefed Congress on the option of shooting down missiles.
One official told The Guardian that the shoot-down strategy would occur after a nuclear test, with the objective being to signal to Pyongyang that the US can impose military consequences for a step Donald Trump has described as ‘unacceptable’.
On a visit to South Korea this week, US vice-president Mike Pence warned Pyongyang against testing Mr Trump’s ‘resolve’, and declared an end to Barack Obama’s ‘strategic patience’ policy.
But North Korea’s deputy foreign minister, Han Song-Ryol, told the BBC that Pyongyang would continue to test missiles ‘on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis’. All-out war would ensue if the US took military action, he said.
The US was embarrassed yesterday when photographs emerged of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson sailing through the Sunda Strait, which separates the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. The photographs were taken on Saturday, three days after the White House described its mission in the Sea of Japan – 3,500 miles away.
The carrier – which has been hailed as a huge show of force by the US – is now on a northerly course for the Korean Peninsula and is expected to arrive in the region next week, defence department officials said.
Speaking in the Commons yesterday, Boris Johnson said ‘no-one can be complacent’ about the North Korean threat.
The Foreign Secretary told MPs that the country had tested 24 missiles and two nuclear bombs in one year, as he warned the regime was developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike the US.
He said: ‘Yesterday I spoke to my Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and I urged him to use Beijing’s unique influence to restrain North Korea and to allow peaceful resolution of this crisis.’
Mr Johnson added that ‘all hopes of progress rest on international co-operation between China and US’.