SEOUL: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat from their weapons program reaches a level “that we believe requires action.”
Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Korea’s nuclear threat after visiting the world’s most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between the rivals Koreas. He also closed the door on talks with Pyongyang unless it denuclearizes and gives up its weapons of mass destruction.
Asked about the possibility of using military force, Tillerson told a news conference in the South Korean capital, “all of the options are on the table.”
Trump weighed in on the matter Friday on Twitter: “North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been ‘playing’ the United States for years. China has done little to help!“
Tillerson said the US does not want a military conflict, “but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten South Korean forces or our own forces that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table.”
But he said that by taking other steps, including sanctions, the US is hopeful that North Korea could be persuaded to take a different course before it reaches that point.
Past US administrations have considered military force because of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them, but rarely has that option been expressed so explicitly.
North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple UN Security Council resolutions and appearing undeterred by tough international sanctions. The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the US within a few years.
Tillerson met Friday with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se and its acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn on the second leg of a three-nation trip which began in Japan and will end in China. State Department officials have described it as a “listening tour” as the administration seeks a coherent North Korea policy, well-coordinated with its Asian partners.
Earlier Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter Friday at Camp Bonifas, US-led UN base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953. He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed.
Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior US officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it’s the first trip by the new Trump administration’s senior diplomat.
The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. Land mine explosions in 2015 that Seoul blamed on Pyongyang maimed two South Korean soldiers and led the rivals to threaten each other with attacks.”
Hordes of tourists visit both sides, despite the lingering animosity. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.
President Donald Trump is seen as seeking to examine all options — including military ones — for halting the North’s weapons programs before Pyongyang becomes capable of threatening the US mainland.
Tillerson declared an end to the policy “strategic patience” of the Obama administration, which held off negotiating with Pyongyang while tightening of sanctions but failed to prevent North Korea’s weapons development. Tillerson said USwas exploring “a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures.”
Central to the US review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains the North’s most powerful ally. Tillerson will meet with top Chinese officials including President Xi Jinping in Beijing this weekend.
While the US and its allies in Seoul and Tokyo implore Beijing to press its economic leverage over North Korea, the Chinese have emphasized their desire to relaunch diplomatic talks.
Tillerson, however, said that “20 years of talks with North Korea have brought us to where we are today.”
“It’s important that the leadership of North Korea realize that their current pathway of nuclear weapons and escalating threats will not lead to their objective of security and economic development. That pathway can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, and only then will we be prepared to engage with them in talks,” he said.
Six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks with North Korea, which were hosted by China, have in fact been stalled since 2009. The Obama administration refused to resume them unless the North re-committed to the goal of denuclearization, something that North Korea has shown little interest in doing.
Tillerson urged China and other countries to fully implement UN sanctions on North Korea.
He also accused China of economic retaliation against South Korea over the US deployment of a missile defense system. He called that reaction “inappropriate and troubling” and said China should focus on the North Korean threat that makes the deployment necessary. China sees the system as a threat to its own security.
Last week, North Korea launched four missiles into seas off Japan, in an apparent reaction to major annual military drills the US is currently conducting with South Korea. Pyongyang claims the drills are a rehearsal for invasion.
Tillerson: Use of pre-emptive force an option with North Korea
Tillerson: Use of pre-emptive force an option with North Korea
Indonesia volcano belches colossal ash tower
- Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupted on Monday and Tuesday, killing nine people and forcing the relocation of residents
- Laki-Laki, which means ‘man’ in Indonesian, is twinned with a calmer volcano named after the Indonesian word for ‘woman’
EAST FLORES, Indonesia: A volcano in eastern Indonesia erupted more than half a dozen times on Thursday, catapulting a colossal ash tower five miles into the sky against a backdrop of lightning as nearby residents fled in panic.
Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupted on Monday and Tuesday, killing nine people and forcing the relocation of residents from a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) exclusion zone.
The country’s volcanology agency reported seven eruptions on Thursday, the biggest of which belched an ash tower five miles (eight kilometers) high, according to an observation post.
Some said it was the biggest eruption they had ever seen from Lewotobi Laki-Laki.
“This is the first time I saw this big eruption since I’ve been living in Lewolaga village,” said Anastasia Adriyani, 41, who lives outside the exclusion zone.
“I was cooking at the community kitchen (for evacuees) and when it happened, I ran back home. I was very scared.”
Officials have raised the alert level for the 1,703-meter (5,587-foot) twin-peaked volcano on the tourist island of Flores to the highest level.
There were no immediate reports of damage to nearby villages from Thursday’s fresh eruptions.
But residents and schoolchildren were seen running from their homes, according to an AFP journalist, who added volcanic lightning was also seen.
Locals at a temporary shelter were anxious as the latest eruptions rumbled on Thursday morning.
“It is sad to think of our village, and we are also panicked seeing the continuous eruptions. Since last night and this morning, we’re still worried,” said evacuee Antonius Puka, 56.
Laki-Laki, which means “man” in Indonesian, is twinned with a calmer volcano named after the Indonesian word for “woman.”
Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”
Joe Biden gets blamed by Harris allies for the vice president’s resounding loss
- Biden is set to deliver a Rose Garden address Thursday about the election
WASHINGTON: Joe Biden’s name wasn’t on the ballot, but history will likely remember Kamala Harris’ resounding defeat as his loss too.
As Democrats pick up the pieces following President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory, some of the vice president’s backers are expressing frustration that Biden’s decision to seek reelection until this summer — despite longstanding voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the US-Mexico border — all but sealed his party’s loss of the White House.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
Biden will leave office after leading the US out of the worst pandemic in a century, galvanizing international support for Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion and passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will impact communities for years to come.
But having run four years ago against Trump to “restore the soul of the country,” Biden will make way after just one term for his immediate predecessor, who overcame two impeachments, a felony conviction and an insurrection launched by his supporters. Trump has vowed to radically reshape the federal government and roll back many of Biden’s priorities.
“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these achievements,” said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know he escapes the legacy of being the president who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”
The president on Wednesday stayed out of sight for the second straight day, making congratulatory calls to Democratic lawmakers who won downballot races as well as one to Trump, who he invited for a White House meeting that the president-elect accepted.
Biden is set to deliver a Rose Garden address Thursday about the election. He issued a statement shortly after Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday, praising Harris for running an “historic campaign” under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Some high-ranking Democrats, including three advisers to the Harris campaign, expressed deep frustration with Biden for failing to recognize earlier in the election cycle that he was not up to the challenge. The advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Biden, 81, ended his reelection campaign in July, weeks after an abysmal debate performance sent his party into a spiral and raised questions about whether he still had the mental acuity and stamina to serve as a credible nominee.
But polling long beforehand showed that many Americans worried about his age. Some 77 percent of Americans said in August 2023 that Biden was too old to be effective for four more years, according to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs.
The president bowed out on July 21 after getting not-so-subtle nudges from Democratic Party powers, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He endorsed Harris and handed over his campaign operation to her.
Harris managed to spur far greater enthusiasm than Biden was generating from the party’s base. But she struggled to distinguish how her administration would differ from Biden’s.
Appearing on ABC’s “The View” in September, Harris was not able to identify a decision where she would have separated herself from Biden. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris said, giving the Trump campaign a sound bite it replayed through Election Day.
The strategists advising the Harris campaign said the compressed campaign timetable made it even more difficult for Harris to differentiate herself from the president.
Had Biden stepped aside early in the year, they said, it would have given Democrats enough time to hold a primary. Going through the paces of an intraparty contest would have forced Harris or another eventual nominee to more aggressively stake out differences with Biden.
The strategists acknowledged that overcoming broad dissatisfaction among the American electorate about rising costs in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and broad concerns about the US immigration system weighed heavy on the minds of voters in key states.
Still, they said that Biden had left Democrats in an untenable place.
Harris senior adviser David Plouffe in a posting on X called it a “devastating loss.” Plouffe didn’t assign blame. He noted the Harris campaign “dug out of a deep hole but not enough.”
At the vice president’s concession speech on Wednesday, some Harris supporters said they wished the vice president had had more time to make her pitch to American voters.
“I think that would have made a huge difference,” said Jerushatalla Pallay, a Howard University student who attended the speech at the center of her campus.
Republicans are poised to control the White House and Senate. Control of the House has yet to be determined.
Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the Democratic-aligned group Third Way, said this moment was the most devastating the party has faced in his lifetime.
“Harris was dealt a really bad hand. Some of it was Biden’s making and some maybe not,” said Bennett, who served as an aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. “Would Democrats fare better if Biden had stepped back earlier? I don’t know if we can say for certain, but it’s a question we’ll be asking ourselves for some time.”
Myanmar junta chief discusses civil war with key ally China
- Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing says military ready for peace if armed groups would engage
- Myanmar is a vital part of Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative
YANGON : Myanmar’s junta chief has held talks with Premier Li Qiang of key ally China on the civil war roiling his country, state media said Thursday, during his first visit to the country since seizing power in a 2021 coup.
Min Aung Hlaing told Li at a meeting in the southwestern city of Kunming that the military was ready for peace if armed groups would engage, according to an account of the meeting in the Global New Light of Myanmar (GNLM).
Myanmar has been racked by conflict between the military and various armed groups opposed to its rule since the army ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021.
The junta is reeling from a major rebel offensive last year that seized a large area of territory, much of it near the border with China.
“The door of peace is always open if they genuinely want peace,” Min Aung Hlaing told Li, according to the GNLM report.
“The armed insurgents should do what needs to be done instead of giving priority to their needs and wishes.”
China has been a major arms supplier to the junta and provided Myanmar with political backing even as other countries shun the generals over their brutal crackdown on dissent.
But Beijing is concerned about the chaos unfolding on its doorstep, in particular the growth of online scam compounds in Myanmar, run by and targeting Chinese citizens.
In its report of the Kunming meeting, on the sidelines of a regional summit, China’s state news agency Xinhua said Li had stressed the need to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and projects in Myanmar.
Last month, a blast targeted the Chinese consulate in Mandalay. There were no casualties but Beijing issued a furious rebuke.
Li did not explicitly back the junta’s approach to the civil war, according to the Xinhua report.
Instead, he told Min Aung Hlaing that China supported Myanmar in “advancing the political reconciliation and transformation.”
Beijing is concerned about the possibility the junta could fall, analysts say, and is suspicious about Western influence among some of the pro-democracy armed groups battling the military.
Myanmar is a vital part of Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative, with railways and pipelines to link China’s landlocked southwest to the Indian Ocean.
South Korea president says ‘not ruling out’ direct weapons to Ukraine
- Yoon also revealed he had discussed North Korea with US president-elect Donald Trump
SEOUL: Major arms exporter South Korea is not ruling out providing weapons directly to Ukraine, President Yoon Suk Yeol said Thursday, signalling a possible shift in Seoul’s stance on the issue.
Yoon also revealed he had discussed North Korea with US president-elect Donald Trump in a phone conversation that laid the groundwork for a meeting in the “near future.”
South Korea has a long-standing policy of not providing weapons to countries in conflict but indicated that could change in light of Pyongyang’s deployment of troops to Russia to aid its war efforts in Ukraine.
“Now, depending on the level of North Korean involvement, we will gradually adjust our support strategy in phases,” Yoon said at a press conference in Seoul.
“This means we are not ruling out the possibility of providing weapons.”
North Korea has become one of the most vocal and important backers of Russia’s full-scale offensive in Ukraine.
Seoul and the West have long accused Pyongyang of supplying artillery shells and missiles to Moscow for use in Ukraine.
The latest accusations, based on intelligence reports, indicate the North has deployed around 10,000 troops to Russia, suggesting even deeper involvement in the conflict and triggering an outcry and warnings in Seoul, Kyiv, and Western capitals.
Yoon said his office would monitor unfolding developments related to the operations of North Korean soldiers, and if he decided to provide weapons to Kyiv, the initial batch would be defensive.
“If we proceed with weapons support, we would prioritize defensive weapons as a first consideration,” he said without elaborating further.
US-Korea relations
In a call with Trump that took place before the press briefing, Yoon said the two men had discussed a number of issues surrounding North Korea while agreeing to a face-to-face meeting.
“We agreed to meet in the near future... I believe there will be an opportunity to meet within this year,” Yoon said.
Among the topics discussed were recent moves by the North, including its sending of trash-carrying balloons southward, he said.
“Regarding North Korea, we addressed issues such as the launching of over 7,000 trash balloons, GPS jamming, and their indiscriminate firing of ICBMs, IRBMs and SRBMs,” Yoon said, referring to a recent flurry of missile tests.
Compared with his dovish predecessor Moon Jae-in, Yoon has taken a tough stance with the nuclear-armed North while improving ties with security ally Washington.
Since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s second summit with then-president Trump collapsed in Hanoi in 2019, Pyongyang has abandoned diplomacy, doubling down on weapons development and rejecting Washington’s offers of talks.
While in office, Trump met with Kim three times, beginning with a landmark summit in Singapore in June 2018, though the pair failed to make much progress on efforts to denuclearise the North.
During the campaign, Trump said: “I think he misses me,” and that it was “nice to get along with somebody that has a lot of nuclear weapons.”
In a commentary released in July, North Korea said that while it was true Trump tried to reflect the “special personal relations” between the heads of states, he “did not bring about any substantial positive change.”
2024 ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest year on record: EU monitor
- Copernicus said 2024 would likely be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average — the period before the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels
- Scientists say the safer 1.5C limit is rapidly slipping out of reach, while stressing that every tenth of a degree of temperature rise heralds progressively more damaging impacts
PARIS: This year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest in recorded history with warming above 1.5C, EU climate monitor Copernicus said Thursday, days before nations are due to gather for crunch UN climate talks.
The European agency said the world was passing a “new milestone” of temperature records that should serve to accelerate action to cut planet-heating emissions at the UN negotiations in Azerbaijan next week.
Last month, marked by deadly flooding in Spain and Hurricane Milton in the United States, was the second hottest October on record, with average global temperatures second only to the same period in 2023.
Copernicus said 2024 would likely be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average — the period before the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels.
This does not amount to a breach of the Paris deal, which strives to limit global warming to below 2C and preferably 1.5C, because that is measured over decades and not individual years.
“It is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first year of more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels,” said Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Deputy Director Samantha Burgess.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29.”
The UN climate negotiations in Azerbaijan, which will set the stage for a new round of crucial carbon-cutting targets, will take place in the wake of the United States election victory by Donald Trump.
Trump, a climate change denier, pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement during his first presidency — and while his successor Joe Biden took the United States back in, he has threatened to do so again.
Meanwhile, average global temperatures have reached new peaks, as have concentrations of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere.
Scientists say the safer 1.5C limit is rapidly slipping out of reach, while stressing that every tenth of a degree of temperature rise heralds progressively more damaging impacts.
Last month the UN said the current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century, while all current climate pledges taken in full would still amount to a devastating 2.6C temperature rise.
Global warming is not just about rising temperatures, but the knock-on effect of all the extra heat in the atmosphere and seas.
Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and warmer oceans mean greater evaporation, resulting in more intense downpours and storms.
In a month of weather extremes, October saw above-average rainfall across swathes of Europe, as well as parts of China, the US, Brazil and Australia, Copernicus said.
The US is also experiencing ongoing drought, which affected record numbers of people, the EU monitor added.
Copernicus said average sea surface temperatures in the area it monitors were the second highest on record for the month of October.
C3S uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid its calculations.
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much deeper in the past.
Climate scientists say the period being lived through right now is likely the warmest the earth has been for the last 100,000 years, back at the start of the last Ice Age.
