Donald Trump in global trade threat over North Korea hydrogen bomb test
The President meets his military chiefs and when asked by reporters if the US would attack North Korea, he replied: "We'll see."
Sunday 3 September 2017 21:38, UK
Donald Trump has said the US is considering stopping all trade with any country that does business with North Korea.
His announcement in a tweet could be aimed primarily at China, which is Pyongyang's only major ally and a key trading partner.
Tensions between the US and North Korea have increased after Pyongyang said it had tested a hydrogen bomb - its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation to date.
The US President has been meeting his military chiefs and when asked by reporters earlier if America would attack North Korea, he replied: "We'll see."
His defence secretary, General James Mattis, said any threat to the US, its territories or its allies by Pyongyang would be met with a "massive military response".
He said America was "not looking to the total annihilation" of the North but "we have many options to do so".
Writing on Twitter, Mr Trump has warned that appeasing the North will not work, adding: "They only understand one thing!"
He said the regime's "words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States".
He also denounced the secretive country as a "rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success".
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he would compile a new sanctions package, potentially to cut off all trade with North Korea.
The UN Security Council is set to discuss the crisis on Monday.
South Korea has called for the "strongest possible" response, including new UN sanctions to "completely isolate" its northern neighbour.
Seoul's national security adviser, Chung Eui Yong, said there had been talks with Washington about deploying US strategic military assets to the Korean peninsula.
Seoul's defence ministry said the US and South Korean military chiefs have spoken on the telephone and agreed the test was "a provocation that cannot be overlooked".
The chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, General Jeong Kyeong Doo and General Joseph Dunford, "agreed to prepare a South Korea-US military counteraction and to put it into action at the earliest date".
China said it strongly condemned the detonation.
President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have agreed to "appropriately deal with" the latest test and "stick to the goal of denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula".
And Japan's foreign minister, Taro Kono, described the new explosion as "extremely unforgivable".
The , which is thought to have been about five times larger than the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in World War II, caused a manmade earthquake.
Pyongyang said via state media that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb with "perfect success".
It claimed the device could be mounted on its newly developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, which experts have said are capable of reaching the US mainland.
There has been no independent confirmation the detonation was a hydrogen bomb rather than a less powerful atomic weapon of the kind Pyongyang has tested in the past.
Prime Minister Theresa May said the "reckless" nuclear test posed an "unacceptable further threat to the international community".
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said if North Korea managed to fit a hydrogen bomb to a "successful missile" it would "unquestionably present a new order of threat".
Concerning the way ahead, Mr Johnson said that "none of the military options are good".
But on sanctions, he pointed out that China is responsible for 90% of North Korea's trade, adding that Kim Jong Un's nation has only six months of oil supplies left.
He said Britain's message to Beijing was: "We think there's more scope, for you the Chinese, to put economic pressure on the North Koreans."