Tag Archives: North Korea

China’s military practices for ‘surprise attack’ over sea near Korea

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s air force has carried out exercises near the Korean peninsula, practicing to defend against a “surprise attack” coming over the sea, Chinese state media reported.

An anti-aircraft defense battalion carried out the exercises early on Tuesday, near the Bohai Sea, the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea that separates China from the peninsula, an official military website www.81.cn reported.

Troops traveled to the site from central China before immediately beginning drills to fend off the “surprise attack” simulating real battle, it said.

“The troops rapid response capabilities and actual combat levels have effectively been tested,” it said.

It was the first time certain weapons, which it did not identify, had been used to shoot down low-altitude targets coming over the sea, www.81.cn said, without elaborating.

China’s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

The exercise came days after North Korea carried out its sixth and largest nuclear test of an advanced hydrogen bomb and there is mounting concern internationally that the country plans more weapons tests, possibly of a long-range missile.

After weeks of rising tension, South Korea and the United States have been discussing the deployment of aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula.

China is deeply suspicious of any U.S. backed military build up in the region and has repeatedly expressed anger at the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile defense system in South Korea.

(Reporting by Christian Shepherd)

Putin says sanctions, pressure alone won’t resolve North Korea crisis

Putin says sanctions, pressure alone won't resolve North Korea crisis

By Denis Pinchuk and Christine Kim

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia/SEOUL (Reuters) – Resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis is impossible with sanctions and pressure alone, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday after meeting his South Korean counterpart, adding that the impact of cutting oil would be worrying.

Putin met South Korea’s Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of an economic summit in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok amid mounting international concern that their neighbor plans more weapons tests, possibly a long-range missile launch ahead of a weekend anniversary.

Putin denounced North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear bomb test on Sunday, saying Russia did not recognize its nuclear status.

“Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear program is a crude violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, undermines the non-proliferation regime and creates a threat to the security of northeastern Asia,” Putin said at a joint news conference.

“At the same time, it is clear that it is impossible to resolve the problem of the Korean peninsula only by sanctions and pressure,” he said.

No headway could be made without political and diplomatic tools, Putin said, later telling the TASS news agency that Russian and North Korean delegations might meet at the Vladivostok forum.

Moon, who came to power this year advocating a policy of pursuing engagement with North Korea, has come under increasing pressure to take a harder line.

He has asked the United Nations to consider tough new sanctions after North Korea’s latest nuclear test.

Diplomats say the U.N. Security Council could consider banning North Korean textile exports, barring its airline or stopping supplies of oil to the government and military.

Other measures could include preventing North Koreans from working abroad and putting top officials on a blacklist aimed at imposing asset freezes and travel bans.

“I ask Russia to actively cooperate as this time it is inevitable that North Korea’s oil supply should be cut at the least,” Moon told Putin, according to a readout from a South Korean official.

Putin said North Korea would not give up its nuclear program no matter how tough the sanctions.

“We too, are against North Korea developing its nuclear capabilities and condemn it, but it is worrying cutting the oil pipeline will harm the regular people, like in hospitals,” Putin said, according to the South Korean presidential official.

Russia’s exports of crude oil to North Korea were tiny at about 40,000 tonnes a year, Putin said. By comparison, China provides it with about 520,000 tonnes of crude a year, according to industry sources.

Last year, China shipped just over 96,000 tonnes of gasoline and almost 45,000 tonnes of diesel to North Korea, where it is used across the economy, from fishermen and farmers to truckers and the military.

‘FREEZE FOR FREEZE’

Sanctions have done little to stop North Korea boosting its nuclear and missile capacity as it faces off with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has vowed to stop it from being able to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear weapon.

China and Russia have advocated a “freeze for freeze” plan, where the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programs, but neither side is willing to budge.

North Korea says it needs to develop its weapons to defend itself against what it sees as U.S. aggression.

South Korea and the United States are technically still at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

China objects to both the military drills and the deployment in South Korea of an advanced U.S. missile defense system that has a radar that can see deep into Chinese territory.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry said the four remaining batteries of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system would be deployed on a golf course in the south of the country on Thursday.

Two THAAD batteries have already been installed.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang reiterated China’s opposition to the system, saying it could only “severely damage” regional security and raise “tensions and antagonism”.

“China strongly urges the United States and South Korea to pay attention to China and other regional nations’ security interests and concerns, immediately halt the progress of the relevant deployment, and remove the relevant equipment,” Geng said.

BIG BLAST

Asian stocks fell on Wednesday after a slide on Wall Street overnight while the dollar was on the defensive with Korean tension showing few signs of abating.

Sunday’s test of what North Korea said was an advanced hydrogen bomb was its largest by far.

Japan upgraded its assessment of the North Korean test to 160 kilotons from 120 kilotons after the size of the earthquake it generated was revised to magnitude 6.1.

“We estimate this was far bigger than previous nuclear tests,” Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters.

Satellite imagery appeared to show the blast caused landslides at North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site, according to 38 North, a Washington-based North Korean monitoring project.

South Korean officials said they were watching for radioactive fallout from the test and for signs of preparations for more activity.

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Wednesday China held the key to resolving the crisis, reiterating comments made by Prime Minister Theresa May and Australian leader Malcolm Turnbull after they spoke with Trump.

“China holds the key, the oil to North Korea flows from China … China has not just influence but has many of the levers that are needed to change behavior in North Korea,” Fallon told BBC radio.

For a graphic on nuclear North Korea, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/NORTHKOREA-MISSILES/010031V7472/index.html

(Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim in SEOUL, Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA, William Mallard and Kaori Kaneko in TOKYO, Christian Shepherd and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Wall Street falls more than 1 percent on rising North Korea worries

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Sruthi Shankar

(Reuters) – The three major Wall Street indexes fell more than 1 percent on Tuesday and were on track to mark their worst single-day fall in nearly three weeks, weighed down by mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea on Sunday conducted its sixth nuclear test, which it said was of an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile, marking a dramatic escalation of the regime’s stand-off with the United States and its allies.

South Korea’s Asia Business Daily, citing an unidentified source, reported that North Korea had moved what looked like an intercontinental ballistic missile towards its west coast, possibly in preparation for a launch.”It looks as though escalation has gone to the next level, but there are lot of things in the coming weeks that may be causing people to get a little bit more cautious,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.

Wall Street may face a rough ride in September, typically the worst month for stocks, if there is a showdown in Washington over the U.S. budget and the federal debt ceiling.

The CBOE Volatility index <.VIX>, Wall Street’s fear gauge rose 3.26 points to 13.39 and was on track to close higher for the first time in four days.At 12:41 p.m. ET (1641 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> was down 239.61 points, or 1.09 percent, at 21,747.95 and the S&P 500 <.SPX> was down 24.8 points, or 1 percent, at 2,451.75. The Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> was down 85.79 points, or 1.33 percent, at 6,349.54.

Nine of the 11 major S&P sectors were lower. Financial stocks <.SPSY> were the worst hit, putting them on track for their biggest one-day fall since mid-May, after an influential Federal Reserve policymaker struck a dovish tone on interest rates.

Fed Governor Lael Brainard said U.S. inflation is falling “well short” of target so the central bank should be cautious about raising interest rates any further until it is confident that prices are headed higher.

Goldman Sachs’ <GS.N> fell 3.3 percent, dragging down the Dow; while the S&P was pulled lower by a more than 2 percent fall in shares of JPMorgan <JPM.N> and Bank of America <BAC.N>.

Shares of United Technologies <UTX.N> were down 4.49 percent after Boeing <BA.N> said on Tuesday it would look closely at United’s $23 billion buy of Rockwell Collins <COL.N>. Boeing was down 1.2 percent and Rockwell inched up 0.5 percent.

Insmed <INSM.O> shares more than doubled after the company said its drug for the treatment of a rare and serious lung disorder met the main goal in a late-stage study.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by 2,132 to 722. On the Nasdaq, 2,053 issues fell and 812 advanced.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

South Korea seeks bigger warheads, North Korean ICBM reportedly on the move

South Korean troops fire Hyunmoo Missile into the waters of the East Sea at a military exercise in South Korea September 4, 2017. Defense Ministry/Yonhap/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. SOUTH KOREA OUT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVE.

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea said on Tuesday an agreement with the United States to scrap a weight limit on its warheads would help it respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat after it conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test two days ago.

South Korean officials believe more weapons tests by the reclusive state are possible, despite international outrage over Sunday’s nuclear test and calls for more sanctions against it.

South Korea’s Asia Business Daily, citing an unidentified source, reported that North Korea had been observed moving a rocket that appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) towards its west coast.

The rocket started moving on Monday and was spotted moving only at night to avoid surveillance, the newspaper said.

South Korea’s defense ministry, which warned on Monday that North Korea was ready to launch an ICBM at any time, said it was not able to confirm the report.

Analysts and South Korean policymakers believe North Korea may test another weapon on or around Sept. 9, when it celebrates its founding day.

North Korea’s fifth nuclear test fell on that date last year, reflecting its tendency to conduct weapons tests on significant dates.

North Korea says it needs to develop its weapons to defend itself against what it sees as U.S. aggression.

South Korea, after weeks of rising tension, is talking to the United States about deploying aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula, and has been ramping up its own defenses.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, agreed on Monday to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles, South Korea’s presidential office said, enabling it to strike North Korea with greater force in the event of war.

The White House said Trump gave “in-principle approval” to the move.

The United States and South Korea signed a pact in 1979, a year after the South successfully tested a ballistic missile, with Washington expressing the need for limits on ballistic missile capability over concern that tests could undermine regional security.

South Korea and the United States are technically still at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

Both sides have thousands of rockets and artillery pieces aimed at each other across the world’s most heavily armed border, but the North’s rapid development of nuclear weapons and missiles has altered the balance, requiring a stronger response from South Korea, officials say.

“We believe the unlimited warhead payload will be useful in responding to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats,” South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told a briefing.

Under current guidelines, last changed in 2012, South Korea can develop missiles up to a range of 800 km (500 miles) with a maximum payload of 500 kg (1,102 lb).

Most of North Korea’s missiles are designed to carry payloads of 100-1,000 kg (220-2,205 lb), according to Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a U.S.-based think thank.

‘BEGGING FOR WAR’

South Korea’s navy held more exercises on Tuesday, a naval officer told a defense ministry briefing. .

“Today’s training is being held to prepare for maritime North Korean provocations, inspect our navy’s readiness and to reaffirm our will to punish the enemy,” the official said.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Monday North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was “begging for war” and urged the 15-member Security Council to impose the “strongest possible” sanctions to deter him and shut down his trading partners.

Haley said the United States would circulate a new Security Council resolution on North Korea this week and wanted a vote on it on Monday.

Trump has repeatedly warned that “all options were on the table” regarding North Korea, including military options.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said threats of military action were counterproductive.

“Russia condemns North Korea’s exercises, we consider that they are a provocation,” Putin told reporters after a summit of the BRICS countries in China.

“(But) ramping up military hysteria will lead to nothing good. It could lead to a global catastrophe.

While referring to more sanctions as a “road to nowhere”, Putin said Russia was prepared to discuss “some details” around the issue. He did not elaborate.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said she believed her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, was open to more sanctions.

“I cannot tell you exact details as the minister asked me not to disclose the content of our discussion, but I could sense that China could be open to more sanctions,” Kang told lawmakers in parliament, referring to a phone call with Wang on Monday.

China’s foreign ministry said it would take part in security council discussions in “a responsible and constructive manner”.

Diplomats have said the Security Council could consider banning North Korean textile exports, banish its national airline and stopping supplies of oil to the government and military.

Other measures could include preventing North Koreans from working abroad and adding top officials to a blacklist aiming at imposing asset freezes and travel bans.

Sanctions imposed after missile tests in July were aimed at slashing North Korea’s $3 billion annual export revenue by a third by banning exports of coal, iron, lead and seafood.

China accounted for 92 percent of North Korea’s trade in 2016, according to South Korea’s government trade promotion agency.

For a graphic on nuclear North Korea, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/NORTHKOREA-MISSILES/010031V7472/index.html

(Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting by Dennis Pinchuk in XIAMEN, China, Christian Shepherd in BEIJING, Michelle Nichols at the UNITED NATIONS and Tim Ahmann and David Shepardson in WASHINGTON; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

North Korea warns of ‘more gift packages’ for U.S.

North Korea warns of 'more gift packages' for U.S.

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Amid international uproar over North Korea’s latest and biggest nuclear weapons test, one of its top diplomats said on Tuesday it was ready to send “more gift packages” to the United States.

Han Tae Song, ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the U.N. in Geneva, was addressing the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament two days after his country detonated its sixth nuclear test explosion.

“I am proud of saying that just two days ago on the 3rd of September, DPRK successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test for intercontinental ballistic rocket under its plan for building a strategic nuclear force,” Han told the Geneva forum.

“The recent self-defense measures by my country, DPRK, are a ‘gift package’ addressed to none other than the U.S.,” Han said.

“The U.S. will receive more ‘gift packages’ from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK,” he added without elaborating.

Military measures being taken by North Korea were “an exercise of restraint and justified self-defense right” to counter “the ever-growing and decade-long U.S. nuclear threat and hostile policy aimed at isolating my country”.

“Pressure or sanctions will never work on my country,” Han declared, adding: “The DPRK will never under any circumstances put its nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table.”

U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said that North Korea had defied the international community once again with its test.

“We look forward to working with our partners in the (Security) Council with regard to a new resolution that will put some of the strongest sanctions possible on the DPRK,” he told the conference.

“Advances in the regime’s nuclear and missile program are a threat to us all … now is the time to say tests, threats and destabilizing actions will no longer be tolerated,” Wood said.

“It can no longer be business as usual with this regime.”

The White House said on Monday President Donald Trump had agreed “in principle” to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles in the wake of the North’s latest test.

The United States accused North Korea’s trading partners of aiding its nuclear ambitions and said Pyongyang was “begging for war”.

(Editing by Tom Miles and Andrew Roche)

U.S. envoy says North Korean leader ‘begging for war’ as U.N. mulls sanctions

Secretary of Defense James Mattis (L) makes a statement outside the West Wing of the White House in response to North Korea's latest nuclear testing, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford listens, in Washington, U.S., September 3, 2017

By Christine Kim and Michelle Nichols

SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States on Monday said countries trading with North Korea were aiding its “dangerous nuclear intentions” as the United Nations Security Council mulled tough new sanctions and the isolated regime showed signs of planning more missile tests.

South Korea said it was talking to Washington about deploying aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula following the North’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sunday.

At a Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said North Korea’s Kim Jong Un was “begging for war” and urged the 15-member group to adopt the strongest possible measures to deter him.

“War is never something the United States wants. We don’t want it now. But our country’s patience is not unlimited. We will defend our allies and our territory,” Haley said.

“The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to their reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions,” she said.

Haley said the United States will circulate a new Security Council resolution on North Korea this week and wants a vote on it next Monday.

China, a top trading partner with North Korea, and Russia called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

“China will never allow chaos and war on the (Korean) Peninsula,” said Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations.

Russia said peace in the region was in jeopardy.

“A comprehensive settlement to the nuclear and other issues plaguing the Korean peninsula can be arrived at solely through political diplomatic channels,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Typically, China and Russia only view a test of a long-range missile or a nuclear weapon as a trigger for further possible U.N. sanctions.

U.S. President Donald Trump had asked to be briefed on all available military options, according to his defense chief.

Officials said activity around missile launch sites suggested North Korea planned more missile tests.

“We have continued to see signs of possibly more ballistic missile launches. We also forecast North Korea could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Jang Kyoung-soo, acting deputy minister of national defense policy, told a parliament hearing on Monday.

North Korea tested two ICBMs in July that could fly about 10,000 km (6,200 miles), putting many parts of the U.S. mainland within range and prompting a new round of tough international sanctions.

 

MILITARY EXERCISES

South Korea’s air force and army conducted exercises involving long-range air-to-surface and ballistic missiles on Monday following the North’s nuclear test on Sunday, its joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.

In addition to the drill, South Korea will cooperate with the United States and seek to deploy “strategic assets like aircraft carriers and strategic bombers”, Jang said.

South Korea’s defense ministry also said it would deploy the four remaining launchers of a new U.S. missile defense system after the completion of an environmental assessment by the government.

The rollout of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system at a site south of the South Korean capital, Seoul, which is vehemently opposed by neighboring China and Russia, had been delayed since June.

At the Security Council, neither Russia nor China mentioned their long-held opposition to THAAD or the prospect of further U.N. sanctions in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test.

North Korea said it tested an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile on Sunday, prompting a warning from U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis of a “massive” military response from the United States if it or its allies were threatened.

People walk past a street monitor showing a news report about North Korea's nuclear test in Tokyo, Japan, September 3, 2017.

People walk past a street monitor showing a news report about North Korea’s nuclear test in Tokyo, Japan, September 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

Trump has previously vowed to stop North Korea developing nuclear weapons and said he would unleash “fire and fury” if it threatened U.S. territory

Despite the tough talk, the immediate focus of the international response was on tougher economic sanctions.

Diplomats have said the Security Council could now consider banning North Korean textile exports and its national airline, stop supplies of oil to the government and military, prevent North Koreans from working abroad and add top officials to a blacklist to subject them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

Asked about Trump’s threat to punish countries that trade with North Korea, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China has dedicated itself to resolving the North Korean issue via talks, and China’s efforts had been recognized.

“What we absolutely cannot accept is that on the one hand (we are) making arduous efforts to peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, and on the other hand (our) interests are being sanctioned or harmed. This is both not objective and not fair,” he told a regular briefing.

On possible new U.N. sanctions, and whether China would support cutting off oil, Geng said it would depend on the outcome of Security Council discussions.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said in an editorial that North Korea was “playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship” and it should wake up to the fact that such a tactic “can never bring security it pursues”.

 

SKEPTICISM

While South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed on Monday to work with the United States to pursue stronger sanctions, Russia voiced scepticism.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said sanctions on North Korea had reached the limit of their impact. Any more would be aimed at breaking its economy, so a decision to impose further constraints would become dramatically harder, he told a BRICS summit in China.

South Korea says the aim of stronger sanctions is to draw North Korea into dialogue. But, in a series of tweets on Sunday, Trump also appeared to rebuke South Korea for that approach.

“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!” Trump said on Twitter.

Still, Trump’s response was more orderly and less haphazard than he had offered after North Korea’s previous hostile actions.

His handling of its latest nuclear test reflected a more traditional approach to crisis management, which U.S. officials said illustrated the influence of Mattis and the new White House chief of staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly.

Japanese and South Korean stock markets both closed down about 1 percent on Monday, while safe-haven assets including gold and sovereign bonds ticked higher, but trade was cautious. U.S. stock markets were closed for the Labor Day holiday.

“Assuming the worst on the Korean peninsula has not proven to be a winning trading strategy this year,” said Sean Callow, a senior foreign exchange strategist at Westpac Bank.

“Investors seem reluctant to price in anything more severe than trade sanctions, and the absence of another ‘fire and fury’ Trump tweet has helped encourage markets to respond warily.”

South Korea’s finance minister vowed to support financial markets if instability showed signs of spreading to the real economy.

(Additional reporting by Shin-hyung Lee, Hyunjoo Jin and Cynthia Kim in SEOUL, Steve Holland, David Brunnstrom, Tim Ahmann, David Shepardson and John Walcott in WASHINGTON, John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI, Wayne Cole and Swati Pandey in SYDNEY; Writing by Lincoln Feast and Jeff Mason; Editing by Robert Birsel and Paul Simao)

 

Subdued by Harvey, Congress reconvenes facing fiscal tests

Church Volunteers work to remove Hurricane Harvey flood damage from a home in Houston, Texas, U.S. September 2, 2017.

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas, but could bring some fiscal order to Washington where Republicans and Democrats will need to put political differences aside in order to approve spending to repair the damage from flooding in and around Houston.

Lawmakers returning to Washington after a month-long break are expected to swiftly agree to an initial request for nearly $8 billion in disaster aid. More requests will follow from the Trump administration, with the fractious Republicans who control the House of Representatives and the Senate determined to look capable of governing in a crisis.

Some estimates say Harvey could cost U.S. taxpayers almost as much as the total federal aid outlay of more than $110 billion for 2005’s record-setting Hurricane Katrina.

That sobering cost and the urgent needs of Harvey’s victims have helped to calm a fiscal storm that had threatened to engulf Congress and President Donald Trump ahead of Oct. 1. The rancor revolves around the deadline for lawmakers to approve a temporary spending measure to keep the government from shutting down, as well as the need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

“There’s reason to hope that in the wake of the tragedy in Texas … there will be a renewed sense of community and common purpose that can help get things done,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist who once worked as spokesman for former House Speaker John Boehner.

Before Harvey, Trump had threatened to veto such spending and trigger a shutdown if Congress refused to fund his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. He has dropped his threat, the Washington Post reported on Friday, making a shutdown less likely.

As of the Labor Day holiday weekend, approval by Congress was widely anticipated in late September of a stopgap bill, or continuing resolution, to continue current spending levels for two to three more months.

The need to help Hurricane Harvey victims “creates another reason as to why you’d want to keep the government open,” Republican Senator Roy Blunt said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

 

FRESH START WITH TRUMP

With much of Washington distracted by tensions with North Korea over its nuclear program, Congress must also raise the federal debt ceiling by the end of September or early October to stave off an unprecedented U.S. government debt default, which would shake global markets.

The debt ceiling caps how much money the U.S. government can borrow, and some conservatives are loath to raise it without spending reforms. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday said Congress should act quickly to increase the debt limit, otherwise relief funding for hurricane-ravaged areas of Texas might be delayed.

“Without raising the debt limit, I am not comfortable that we will get money to Texas this month to rebuild,” Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday.

Blunt, a junior member of Senate Republican leadership, said it was possible lawmakers could tie legislation raising the debt ceiling to measures providing financial aid for recovery from Harvey. “That’s one way to do it,” he said on Meet the Press.

Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines said Friday he would prefer to see spending reforms attached to the borrowing ceiling. “We need to do something to reduce the debt.”

Senior Republicans were warning Trump not to anger Democrats by carrying through with his threat to curtail the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for immigrant children, which Democrats widely support. Democratic votes will likely be needed to both raise the debt ceiling and prevent a shutdown.

Trump might have listened to them. Sources said on Sunday that he has decided to scrap the program that shields the young immigrants from deportation, but he will give Congress six months to craft a bill to replace it.

With his tendency to send conflicting policy signals and attack fellow Republicans, Trump may present the biggest uncertainty as Congress gets back to work.

The four top Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House are set to hold a rare bipartisan meeting with Trump on Wednesday to chart a path forward for the multiple fiscal issues.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who will attend the meetings, spent much of August feuding with Trump, who attacked the Kentuckian repeatedly on Twitter.

One Republican strategist said the Senate leader would not dwell on those tensions. “Basically every Republican senator is looking to put whatever nonsense happened on Twitter in August in the rear view mirror and focus on all the important work that needs to get done in September,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff and campaign manager for McConnell.

 

(Additional reporting by David Morgan and Chris Sanders; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Mary Milliken)

 

South Korea warns that North may launch ICBM after nuclear test

South Korean troops fire Hyunmoo Missile into the waters of the East Sea at a military exercise in South Korea September 4, 2017.

By Christine Kim and David Brunnstrom

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – South Korea said on Monday it was talking to the United States about deploying aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula after signs North Korea might launch more missiles in the wake of its sixth and largest nuclear test.

The U.N. Security Council was set to meet later on Monday to discuss new sanctions against the isolated regime. U.S. President Donald Trump had also asked to be briefed on all available military options, according to his defense chief.

Officials said activity around missile launch sites suggested North Korea planned more missile tests.

“We have continued to see signs of possibly more ballistic missile launches. We also forecast North Korea could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Jang Kyoung-soo, acting deputy minister of national defense policy, told a parliament hearing on Monday.

North Korea tested two ICBMs in July that could fly about 10,000 km (6,200 miles), putting many parts of the U.S. mainland within range and prompting a new round of tough international sanctions.

South Korea’s air force and army conducted exercises involving long-range air-to-surface and ballistic missiles on Monday following the North’s nuclear test on Sunday, its joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.

In addition to the drill, South Korea will cooperate with the United States and seek to deploy “strategic assets like aircraft carriers and strategic bombers”, Jang said.

South Korea’s defense ministry also said it would deploy the four remaining launchers of a new U.S. missile defense system after the completion of an environmental assessment by the government.

The rollout of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system at a site south of the South Korean capital, Seoul, is vehemently opposed by neighboring China and Russia, had been delayed since June.

 

TOUGH TALK

North Korea said it tested an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile on Sunday, prompting a warning of a “massive” military response from the United States if it or its allies were threatened.

“We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said after meeting Trump and his national security team.

“But as I said, we have many options to do so.”

Trump has previously vowed to stop North Korea developing nuclear weapons and said he would unleash “fire and fury” if it threatened U.S. territory

Despite the tough talk, the immediate focus of the international response was expected to be on tougher economic sanctions.

Diplomats have said the U.N. Security Council could now consider banning North Korean textile exports and its national airline, stop supplies of oil to the government and military, prevent North Koreans from working abroad and add top officials to a blacklist to subject them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

Asked about Trump’s threat to punish countries that trade with North Korea, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China has dedicated itself to resolving the North Korean issue via talks, and China’s efforts had been recognized.

“What we absolutely cannot accept is that on the one hand (we are) making arduous efforts to peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, and on the other hand (our) interests are being sanctioned or harmed. This is both not objective and not fair,” he told a regular briefing.

On possible new U.N. sanctions, and whether China would support cutting off oil, Geng said it would depend on the outcome of Security Council discussions.

Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency said in an editorial North Korea was “playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship” and it should wake up to the fact that such a tactic “can never bring security it pursues”.

While South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed on Monday to work with the United States to pursue stronger sanctions, Russia voiced scepticism.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said sanctions on North Korea had reached the limit of their impact. Any more would be aimed at breaking its economy, so a decision to impose further constraints would become dramatically harder, he told a BRICS summit in China.

South Korea says the aim of stronger sanctions is to draw North Korea into dialogue. But, in a series of tweets on Sunday, Trump also appeared to rebuke South Korea for that approach.

“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!” Trump said on Twitter.

Still, Trump’s response was more orderly and less haphazard than he had offered to other hostile actions by North Korea.

His handling of its latest nuclear test reflected a more traditional approach to crisis management, which U.S. officials said illustrated the influence of Mattis and new White House chief of staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly.

 

MARKETS CAUTIOUS

Japanese and South Korean stock markets both closed down about 1 percent on Monday, while safe haven assets including gold and sovereign bonds ticked higher, but trade was cautious. [MKTS/GLOB]

“Assuming the worst on the Korean peninsula has not proven to be a winning trading strategy this year,” said Sean Callow, a senior foreign exchange strategist at Westpac Bank.

“Investors seem reluctant to price in anything more severe than trade sanctions, and the absence of another ‘fire and fury’ Trump tweet has helped encourage markets to respond warily.”

South Korea’s finance minister vowed to support financial markets if instability showed signs of spreading to the real economy.

Sunday’s test had registered with international seismic agencies as a man-made earthquake near a test site. Japanese and South Korean officials said the tremor was about 10 times more powerful than the one picked up after North Korea’s previous nuclear test a year ago.

China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration said data from radiation monitoring stations near the North Korean border showed no impact on “China’s environment or populace”.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that, while North Korea was not a puppet state of China, Beijing needed to do more to pressure its neighbor.

“The Chinese are frustrated and dismayed by North Korea’s conduct, but China has the greatest leverage, and with the greatest leverage comes the greatest responsibility,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Monday.

 

For a graphic on nuclear North Korea, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/NORTHKOREA-MISSILES/010031V7472/index.html

 

 

(Additional reporting by Shin-hyung Lee, Hyunjoo Jin, Cynthia Kim in SEOUL, Steve Holland and John Walcott in WASHINGTON, John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI, Wayne Cole and Swati Pandey in SYDNEY; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

 

U.S., South Korea agree to revise missile treaty in face of North Korean threats

The intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14, in this photo released July 4, 2017.

SEOUL (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump agreed with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to revise a joint treaty capping the development of the South’s ballistic missiles, Moon’s office said on Saturday, amid a standoff over North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests.

Trump also gave “conceptual” approval to the purchase by the South of billions of dollars of U.S. military hardware, the White House said.

The South wants to raise the missile cap to boost its defenses against the reclusive North, which is pursuing missile and nuclear weapons programs in defiance of international warnings and UN sanctions.

“The two leaders agreed to the principle of revising the missile guideline to a level desired by South Korea, sharing the view that it was necessary to strengthen South Korea’s defense capabilities in response to North Korea’s provocations and threats,” South Korea’s presidential Blue House said.

Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the South and its main ally, the United States.

North Korea sharply raised regional tension this week with the launch of its Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.

That followed the test launch of two long-range ballistic missiles in July in a sharply lofted trajectory that demonstrated a potential range of 10,000 km (6,000 miles) or more that would put many parts of the U.S. mainland within striking distance.

North Korea has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and has recently threatened to land missiles near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

South Korea’s development of its ballistic missiles is limited to range of 800 km (500 miles) and payload weight of 500 kg (1,100 pounds) under a bilateral treaty revised in 2012.

South Korea has said it wants to revise the agreement to increase the cap on the payload.

The two countries agreed to the cap as part of a commitment to a voluntary international arms-control pact known as the Missile Technology Control Regime, aimed at limiting the proliferation missiles and nuclear weapons.

The two leaders pledged to continue to apply strong diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea and to make all necessary preparations to defend against the growing threat by the North, the White House said.

The White House did not mention the voluntary bilateral agreement but said the two leaders agreed to strengthen their defense cooperation and South Korea’s defense capabilities.

Trump “provided his conceptual approval of planned purchases by South Korea of billions of dollars in American military equipment”, the White House said.

Trump, who has warned that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded” in case of further North Korean provocation, reacted angrily to the latest missile test, declaring on Twitter that “talking is not the answer” to resolving the crisis.

North Korea defends its weapons programs as necessary to counter perceived U.S. aggression, such as recent air maneuvers with South Korean and Japanese jets.

(Reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul and Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie)

France says North Korea close to long-range missile capability

A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile is seen in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on August 31, 2017.

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s foreign minister said on Friday that North Korea would have capability to send long-range ballistic missiles in a few months and urged China to be more active diplomatically to resolve the crisis.

“The situation is extremely serious… we see North Korea setting itself as an objective to have tomorrow or the day after missiles that can transport nuclear weapons. In a few months that will be a reality,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told RTL radio.

“At the moment, when North Korea has the means to strike the United States, even Europe, but definitely Japan and China, then the situation will be explosive,” he said.

Le Drian, who spoke to his Chinese counterpart on Thursday, said everything had to be done to ensure a latest round of United Nations sanctions was implemented and urged China, Pyongyang’s main trade partner, to do its utmost to enforce them.

“North Korea must find the path to negotiations. It must be diplomatically active.”

 

(Reporting by John Irish, Editing by Leigh Thomas)