North Korea ‘ begging for war,’ U. S. warns

Envoy Haley steps up pressure on the U. N.

North Korea is “begging for war,” and the United Nations must exhaust all diplomatic means to halt the expansion of the North’s nuclear program before it’s too late, U. S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said at an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Monday.

“Enough is enough,” Haley said, one day after North Korea’s sixth and by far most powerful nuclear test. “We have kicked the can down the road long enough. There is no more road left.”

Haley said the United States would be circulating a proposal for new, tougher sanctions, and she dismissed “freeze for freeze” proposals from China and Russia. Those nations are calling for North Korea to halt nuclear development in exchange for a halt in U. S.- South Korean joint military exercises and removal of a U. S. antimissile system from the peninsula. Haley also sounded a recurring theme from the Trump administration that China must use its sway with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to halt his nuclear program. About 90% of North Korea’s foreign trade is with China.

On Sunday, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test and first in almost a year. Pyongyang claimed it tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb that could be transported on a ballistic missile. Details could not immediately be verified, but South Korean officials estimated the blast had a strength of 50 to 100 kilotons — markedly more powerful than previous tests or the bombs dropped by the U. S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.