North Korea's unlawful weapons programmes represent a clear, grave threat to US national security.
With tensions rising between the US and North Korea, the Pentagon on Sunday called for the isolated communist nation to avoid destabilising the situation further.
“We call on North Korea to refrain from provocative, destabilising actions and rhetoric, and to make the strategic choice to fulfill its international obligations and commitments and return to serious talks,” CNN quoted Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross as saying. “North Korea’s unlawful weapons programmes represent a clear, grave threat to US national security.”
The statement came just hours after a North Korean newspaper said Pyongyang was ready to take out a US aircraft carrier conducting drills with Japanese destroyers near the Philippines.
Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North Korean government’s central committee, said in an editorial the country is ready to illustrate its “military force” by sinking the “nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a single strike.”
The state department, meanwhile, said it was committed to directly addressing the North Korean nuclear threat. “Provocations from North Korea have grown far too common and far too dangerous to ignore,” a department spokesperson told CNN.
“Together with the international community, we will hold the Kim Jung-un regime accountable for its dangerous and reckless actions and serious human rights abuses,” the spokesperson said.
US ambassador to the UN has also warned North Korea saying US will strike North if it attacks a US military base or tests an intercontinental ballistic missile.
In several television interviews, Nikki Haley praised China’s involvement in trying to pressure North Korea to cease missile testing and criticised Pyongyang’s leader, Kim Jong Un, as unstable and paranoid.
