SEOUL: US Vice President Mike Pence warned North Korea Monday not to test Donald Trump’s resolve, declaring that “all options are on the table” in curbing its missile and nuclear weapons programmes.
Defying international pressure, the North Sunday test-fired another missile as fears grow that it may be preparing for its sixth atomic weapons test.
“We hope to achieve this objective (the North’s denuclearisation) through peaceful means but all options are on the table,” Pence told a press conference in the South Korean capital after his trip to the tense border with the North.
“Just in the past two weeks, the world witnessed the strength and resolve of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan.
“North Korea would do well not to test his resolve, or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region,” Pence said at the press conference with South Korea’s Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn.
Tensions between Pyongyang and Washington have soared in recent weeks, as a series of North Korean missile tests have prompted ever-more bellicose warnings from Trump’s administration.
The new and inexperienced US president has indicated he will not allow North Korea to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the western United States.
North Korea’s envoy to the United Nations said the regime was preparing for “any mode of war” triggered by potential US military action, and said his country would respond to a missile or nuclear strike “in kind”.
“If the United States dares opt for a military action (…) the DPRK is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the Americans,” Kim told a news conference, using the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“We will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs,” he said.
Pence declared that the era of US “strategic patience” in dealing with the North was over, after more than two decades.
North Korea “answered our overtures with willful deception, broken promises and nuclear and missile tests”, he said.
The US, which stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, would “defeat any attack and we will meet any use of conventional or nuclear weapons with an overwhelming and effective response”. (APP)