The US military yesterday staged bombing drills with South Korea over the Korean Peninsula and Russia and China began naval exercises ahead of a UN General Assembly meeting today where North Korea’s nuclear threat is likely to loom large.
The flurry of military drills came after Pyongyang fired another mid-range ballistic missile over Japan on Friday and the North conducted its sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 in defiance of UN sanctions and other international pressure.
A pair of US B-1B bombers and four F-35 jets flew from Guam and Japan and joined four South Korean F-15K fighters in the latest drill, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense said.
Photo: AFP / South Korean Ministry of National Defense
The joint drills were being conducted “two to three times a month these days,” South Korean Minister of National Defense Song Young-moo told a parliamentary hearing yesterday.
In Beijing, Xinhua news agency said China and Russia began naval drills off the Russian port of Vladivostok, not far from the border with North Korea.
Those drills were being conducted between Peter the Great Bay, near Vladivostok, and the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, to the north of Japan, it said.
The drills are the second part of China-Russian naval exercises this year, the first part of which was staged in the Baltic in July.
Xinhua did not link the drills to current tension over North Korea.
China and Russia have repeatedly called for a peaceful solution and talks to resolve the issue.
However, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley on Sunday said the UN Security Council had run out of options on containing the North’s nuclear program and the US might have to turn the matter over to the Pentagon.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) said the most pressing task was for all parties to fully enforce the latest UN resolutions on the North, rather than “deliberately complicating the issue.”
Military threats from various parties have not promoted a resolution of the issue, he said.
“This is not beneficial to a final resolution to the peninsula nuclear issue,” Lu told a daily briefing.
The Security Council last week unanimously passed a US-drafted resolution mandating tougher new sanctions against Pyongyang that included banning textile imports and capping crude and gasoline supply.
The China Daily yesterday said that sanctions should be given time to bite and that the door must be left open to talks.
“With its Friday missile launch, Pyongyang wanted to give the impression that sanctions will not work,” it said in an editorial.
“It is too early to claim failure because the latest sanctions have hardly begun to take effect. Giving the sanctions time to bite is the best way to make Pyongyang reconsider,” the newspaper said.
US President Donald Trump is to make his UN debut today with a speech to the General Assembly, although yesterday he was scheduled to give a speech to a US-sponsored event on reforming the world body. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was also to speak at yesterday’s meeting.
Additional reporting by AP
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