US, N Korea clash again
North Korea is only months away from obtaining the capability to hit US territory with a nuclear weapon and must be disarmed, a US envoy said yesterday, dismissing Pyonyang's diplomatic thaw with South Korea as a "charm offensive" that fooled no one.
In a diplomatic showdown at a UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, North Korea responded by blaming Washington for escalating confrontation, saying it was deploying nuclear assets including aircraft carriers near the divided peninsula and was considering a pre-emptive strike against Pyongyang.
"North Korea has accelerated its provocative pursuit of nuclear weapons and missile capabilities, and expressed explicit threats to use nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies in the region," US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood told the Geneva forum.
"North Korean officials insist that they will not give up nuclear weapons, and North Korea may now be only months away from the capability to strike the United States with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles," he said.
A new US nuclear policy review outlined last week "reaffirms that North Korea's illicit nuclear program must be completely, verifiably, and irreversibly eliminated, resulting in a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons," he said.
In November North Korea tested the Hwasong-15 ballistic missile, believed to be capable of reaching the continental United States. It is not yet believed to have the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.
North Korea accused the United States of seeking to aggravate the situation on the divided peninsula by "deploying large nuclear assets" nearby, laying the ground for a possible pre-emptive strike against it.
"US officials including the defense secretary and the CIA director repeatedly talked about DPRK nuclear and missile threat to justify their argument for a military option and a new concept of a so-called 'bloody nose', a limited pre-emptive strike on the DPRK is under consideration within the US administration," North Korean diplomat Ju Yong Chol told the talks.
He said President Donald Trump's 'America First' doctrine and US nuclear superiority would endanger global peace and security and "trigger off a new nuclear arms race and could bring the whole world close to a horrible catastrophe".