US President Donald Trump on Monday declared North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, even as his top diplomat said Washington has not given up hope of a negotiated end to the nuclear standoff with Kim Jong-un’s regime.
Trump promised a rapid escalation of US Treasury sanctions against the North after adding its name to a terror blacklist previously led by Iran and Syria.
“Should have happened a long time ago. Should have happened years ago,” Trump said.
Photo: AP
He cited the death of US student Otto Warmbier, who had been held in a North Korean jail, and the assassination by nerve agent of Kim’s elder half-brother in Kuala Lumpur in February as reasons for the move.
However, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said sanctions and diplomacy could still pressure Kim into talks on nuclear disarmament.
“We still hope for diplomacy,” he said, adding that punitive measures were already having a significant impact on Pyongyang’s economy.
There was no immediate reaction from North Korea, but an editorial in the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun ahead of the announcement described Trump as a “mentally deranged money-grabber” who was leading the US down an “irretrievable road to hell.”
The White House has said it will not tolerate the North’s testing or deployment of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to US cities.
Experts believe Pyongyang is within months of such a threshold.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters that “I welcome and support [the designation] as it raises the pressure on North Korea.
However, there was a more restrained response from South Korea, where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the US measure was “part of the international community’s common efforts to bring North Korea to the path of denuclearization through strong sanctions and pressure.”
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also backed Trump’s decision.
“Kim Jong-un runs a global criminal operation from North Korea peddling arms, peddling drugs, engaged in cybercrime and of course threatening the stability of region with his nuclear weapons,” Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.
China said “more should be done” to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis through dialogue.
“We still hope all relevant parties can contribute to easing tensions, that the relevant parties can resume talks and [adopt] the correct track to resolving the Korean Peninsula issue through dialogue and consultation. More should be done in that regard,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) told a regular briefing.
Some analysts warned of a possible backlash.
“North Korea will consider it as a thing next to a declaration of war,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University for North Korean Studies in Seoul. “There is a possibility that it may retaliate by test-launching an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] in the near future.”
However, US officials say their main hope is that Pyongyang will back down, in the face of what Tillerson described as an inexorable increase in economic and diplomatic pressure.
“We know that there are current shortages of fuel based upon what we can gather anecdotally and also from certain intelligence sources,” Tillerson said. “We know that their revenues are down,” he said. “So I think it is having an effect. Is this the reason we haven’t had a provocative act in 60 days?”
Trump also said his declaration would be the start of a two-week period of announcements — starting with a “very large” US Treasury sanctions measure — that would amount to a “maximum pressure campaign.”
US officials see the designation — which was removed by then-US president George W. Bush in 2008 — as a way of ratcheting up pressure on other states and foreign banks to enforce the sanctions.
Additional reporting by Reuters
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not