The United States has warned North Korea that it will face “the full range of its capabilities” if it were to carry out its threat of a nuclear attack. The US has also dismissed North Korea”s declaration that the 1953 armistice with Seoul is nullified as “bellicose rhetoric”.
President Barack Obama”s top national security adviser, Tom Donilon, called on China to join in further isolating Pyongyang, following the North Korean military leadership”s declaration that the truce with South Korea was void after Seoul and the US kicked off a joint military exercise, reports the Guardian. The annulment of the treaty also follows the UN security council”s imposition of additional sanctions against Pyongyang after it carried out a third atomic bomb test, and threats by Pyongyang to fire nuclear weapons at the US and South Korea in response.
Donilon said in a speech to the Asia Society in New York, that North Korea”s claims may be hyperbolic, but there should be no doubt that the US would draw upon the full range of its capabilities to respond to the threat posed to the country and its allies by North Korea. Donilon said the US would not accept North Korea as a nuclear state, nor will it stand by while it seeks to develop a nuclear-armed missile that can target the US.
Donilon called for North Korea to return to negotiations, but warned that Washington will not be fooled twice after helping Pyongyang with food and other supplies as part of an earlier agreement to halt nuclear development, only to discover that its communist leaders had gone back on their word.
————–ANI