North Korea diplomacy 'pretty much exhausted'

The UN has run out of options for confronting an increasingly belligerent North Korea, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has said, presenting a unified front with Trump administration officials who continue to float a military option ahead of this week's summit in New York.

“We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we can do at the Security Council at this point,” Haley told CNN, adding that she had “no problem kicking to” Jim Mattis, the US defence secretary. “I think he has plenty of options”.

By claiming that the UN had failed to alter North Korea's militaristic course, Haley hinted at the limits of diplomacy as the world prepares to gather next week for the first UN General Assembly of Donald Trump's presidency.

The Trump administration has dangled the option of a military response. Trump sent a cycle of escalating rhetoric whirring in August by warning North Korea that it would face “fire and fury” if it did not relent, a comment that Haley said was “not an empty threat”.

“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behaviour, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed. And we all know that. And none of us want that. None of us want war,” she said. “We're trying every other possibility that we have, but there's a whole lot of military options on the table”.

Meanwhile, US military staged bombing drills with South Korea over the Korean peninsula and Russia and China began naval exercises ahead of a UN General Assembly meeting today.

A pair of US B-1B bombers and four F-35 jets flew from Guam and Japan and joined four South Korean F-15K fighters in the latest drill, South Korea's defence ministry said.

The joint drills were being conducted "two to three times a month these days", Defence Minister Song Young-moo told a parliamentary hearing yesterday.

In Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said China and Russia began naval drills off the Russian far eastern port of Vladivostok, not far from the Russia-North Korea border, reported Reuters.

Those drills were being conducted between Peter the Great Bay, near Vladivostok, and the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, to the north of Japan, it said.

The drills are the second part of China-Russian naval exercises this year, the first part of which was staged in the Baltic in July. Xinhua did not directly link the drills to current tension over North Korea.

China and Russia have repeatedly called for a peaceful solution and talks to resolve the issue.

North Korea yesterday warned that more sanctions and pressure will only make it accelerate its nuclear programme, reported BBC.

In a strongly worded statement, the foreign ministry called a new round of restrictions imposed by the United Nations as "the most vicious, unethical and inhumane act of hostility".

The foreign ministry statement, carried by North Korea's official news agency KCNA, said: "The increased moves of the US and its vassal forces to impose sanctions and pressure on the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] will only increase our pace towards the ultimate completion of the state nuclear force."

It also said that the new UN sanctions, approved on 11 September, were aimed at bringing down the government.