US Navy Commander Names N.Korea as No.1 Threat

Tillerson is chairing a U.N. Security Council meeting Friday created to get nations to enforce existing penalties on North Korea and weigh new ones. “We’re going to be discussing what next steps may be necessary to increase the pressure on the regime”, he said.

Tensions have escalated since Trump took office three months ago, determined to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile advances.

The unprecedented meeting in a building adjacent to the White House reflected the increased American alarm over North Korea’s progress in developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the USA mainland.

“We should not kid ourselves here, a conflict on the peninsula would be unlike anything we have seen in decades”, she said. “One of these days soon, he will succeed”.

“There is no doubt in my mind”, Harris said.

While the administration has said military strikes remain an option, officials have stressed tougher sanctions as the key strategy given the risks of massive North Korean retaliation – essentially representing a continuation of the policy of former President Barack Obama’s administration, which failed to slow Pyongyang’s weapons programs.

Just hours before the entire U.S. Senate was due to receive a top-level briefing on North Korea at the White House, Admiral Harry Harris testified that he believed Pyongyang’s threats against the United States needed to be taken seriously.

The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it aimed to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programmes, which are in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, through tougher global sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

Multi-nation negotiations with North Korea on its nuclear program stalled in 2008. “In the future if there’s a war and they get a missile it comes here”.

“People have put blindfolds on for decades, and now it’s time to solve the problem”, said Trump.

“We are engaging responsible members of the global community to increase pressure on the DPRK in order to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue”, the statement read, using North Korea’s official name.

On Thursday, a North Korean official told CNN the country’s nuclear tests would “never stop” as long as the U.S. continued what they viewed as “acts of aggression”.

This week, the USA military started moving parts of the controversial THAAD defense system to a deployment site in South Korea amid high tensions over North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.

United States officials said Wednesday’s briefings will center on three key issues: intelligence about the North’s capabilities; U.S. response options, including military ones; and how to get China and other countries to enforce existing economic sanctions on Pyongyang, along with ideas for new penalties.

“This system is a defensive system that will help protect South Korea from ballistic missile attacks from North Korea”, Harris told the House committee during Wednesday’s public hearing. “It is aimed north, not west”, he said, adding: “It poses no threat to China”.

“But North Korea has to decide they’re ready to talk to us about the about the right agenda, and the right agenda is not simply stopping where they are for a few more months or a few more years and then resuming things”, he said, according to excerpts of an interview that will air Friday morning. “I wouldn’t bet my farm on it”.

He said he meant to renegotiate or terminate a United States free trade pact with South Korea because of a deep trade deficit with the country.

While Harris wouldn’t discuss publicly scenarios for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, he did address the risk that USA action could be met by a response that would kill many South Koreans, Japanese and U.S. troops in the region.

Despite the depravity, Harris said it’s a “hollow hope” to think that North Koreans will rise up and topple Kim Jong Un. His spokesman, Mark Toner, said Wednesday that another tactic is getting nations around the world to close down North Korean embassies and consulates, or suspending them from worldwide organizations.

“Meanwhile, the USA “remains open to negotiations” to achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but warns, “we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies”.

THAAD is created to intercept and destroy short and medium-range ballistic missiles during their final phase of flight.

Meanwhile, Mr Tillerson has dismissed the idea that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un is insane, indicating he might be someone who could be negotiated with.

The full-scale deployment has been started and it would be completed by the end of the year, South Korea’s Defense Ministry confirmed.