US Ambassador John Bolton, meeting with the UN Security Council yesterday, said the North has a history of intimidating other nations.
"They're not going to be successful with us," he said on CBS television's The Early Show.
Bolton refused to rule out military action, including a naval blockade, but emphasized that US President George W. Bush wants to resolve the matter using peaceful means.
The North has insisted that Washington hold direct talks with Pyongyang to resolve the standoff over its nuclear program. But the US ambassador in Seoul, Alexander Vershbow, said Monday's report that the North conducted the underground nuclear test would make the possibility of such talks more difficult.
Vershbow insisted that six-party talks -- also involving China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- were still the best approach.
"The North Korean nuclear issue is not a bilateral problem but rather a problem between North Korea and all of its neighbors as well as the US," he told reporters.
The UN Security Council was discussing a US draft resolution that aims to curb the North's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, prohibit all trade in military and luxury goods, and crack down on illegal financial dealings.
However, the potency of possible new sanctions is a wild card in the efforts of the UN Security Council, the US and its allies to contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions and coax it back to negotiations.
The US, Japan and others have slapped a series of sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear program in recent years.
And the countries had indicated that similar consequences would be in store over a nuclear test, long before Monday's still-unconfirmed detonation.
Actions already taken range from blacklisting North Korean banks and restricting port entry of its ships to backing a global ban on trading some military technology with the North.
In the wake of the crackdown, trade with Japan alone tumbled 85 percent, to a paltry US$195 million last year, from 2001.
Yet North Korea went ahead and tested anyway.
But increasing sanctions may be all that's left. Military action or a strategic airstrike against North Korea is riskier than ever in the face of threatened retaliation with atomic weapons.
Tougher measures hinge on whether China and Russia -- the North's closest allies -- support them.
Measures under consideration at the UN include international inspection of all cargo to and from North Korea to limit the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and blanket bans on luxury and military goods and any material that could be used in the production of weapons of mass destruction.
A US draft resolution contains tough new proposals from Japan to ban all countries from allowing in North Korean ships or aircraft carrying arms, nuclear or ballistic missile-related material or luxury goods.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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