New sanctions on North Korea: Only choice available

The North said it will take “action of justice”, but didn’t elaborate.

But Chinese state media hasn’t exactly throw its weight behind the sanctions or the U.S.

The U.S. has “other means of communication” open to North Korea if the country wants to express to the U.S. a desire to talk, Tillerson said, but he didn’t offer specifics. “The sanctions will have an economic impact but little effect on the strategic intent to develop ballistic missiles”.

And the sanctions may not prove effective.

He apparently was referring to his government’s proposal of holding military and humanitarian talks with the north that contrasted with the more hardline USA position of stepping up sanctions and military pressure on the isolated communist state. He says the only way that would change is if another country joined in an American action against North Korea.

In a news conference earlier in the day, Tillerson said the United States is ready to talk with North Korea if it stops conducting tests of ballistic missiles, the latest ones considered capable of reaching the USA mainland.

“We will be monitoring that carefully”, he said.

The U.N. Security Council has hit North Korea with layer after layer of sanctions since 2006, but the moves have failed to thwart the country’s nuclear ambitions.

“Moreover, I will tell him that to build a peace system – North Korea must respond to the two proposals we recently suggested”, he told reporters in Manila on Saturday.

China “hopes North Korea can echo this signal from the United States”, Wang added. If not, what new options does the United States have? The U.S. “is trying to drive the situation of the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war”, it said.

China is the North’s economic lifeline. China opposes Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and was uncharacteristically forthright in saying so this week.

China fears a spread of US influence in the region, though China and the USA agree on wanting to stop North Korea’s nuclear development.

The sanctions are the toughest of the seven Security Council resolutions adopted since 2006 aimed at curbing North Korea’s nuclear militarisation. Four further atomic tests since then have honed its capability to miniaturize a nuclear device.

Pyongyang rattled Washington and its Pacific allies in July, after it conducted a pair of successful test shots of its intercontinental ballistic missile systems.

The top diplomats of the US, Australia and Japan also called on their Southeast Asian counterparts to negotiate a legally binding COC in the disputed waters. China and Russian Federation supported the Obama-era United Nations sanctions agreed upon a year ago, but critics contend that the two countries have not done enough to limit their economic relationship with North Korea. She says they discussed North Korea and Tillerson’s trip to the Philippines for a regional Asia gathering.

Lee Ji-yong, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul, agreed.

That was the highest altitude ever reached by a North Korean missile.

BANG KWANG HYUK, Spokesman, North Korean Delegation (through interpreter): We affirmed that we will never place our nuclear and ballistic missiles program on the negotiating table and won’t budge an inch on strengthening nuclear armament.