UPDATED: 7:52am – Donald Trump has joined condemnation of North Korea’s sixth and apparently most powerful nuclear test.
Pyongyang said it had successfully trialled an advanced hydrogen bomb that could be loaded onto a long-range missile. Although experts urged caution, the country’s sixth nuclear test appeared to be the biggest by North Korea to date.
The US president tweeted that North Korea’s “words and actions” were “very hostile and dangerous”.
“North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success. The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea,” he said on Twitter.
The president also appeared to rebuke ally South Korea, which faces an existential threat from North Korea’s nuclear programme.
“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!” Mr Trump said in an early morning tweet.
Mr Trump refused to rule out military action. Asked while leaving a church service whether the US would attack North Korea, he replied: “We’ll see.”
The president has previously vowed to stop North Korea developing nuclear weapons and said he would unleash “fire and fury” on the country if it threatened US territory.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in China, agreed to “appropriately deal” with North Korea’s nuclear test, the Xinhua news agency reported.
North Korea last carried out a nuclear test in September 2016. It has defied UN sanctions and international pressure to develop nuclear weapons and test missiles that could potentially reach the US.
The latest test on Sunday registered with international seismic agencies as a man-made earthquake. Japanese and South Korean officials said it was about 10 times more powerful than the tremor picked up after North Korea’s last nuclear test.
There was no independent confirmation the detonation was a hydrogen bomb, but Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said Tokyo could not rule out such a possibility.
A US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US had no reason to doubt it was an advanced nuclear device being tested.
– RNZ / Reuters / BBC
