Tag Archives: Threat

Israel would go ‘all-out’ if war breaks out again with Lebanon: air force chief

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) speaks with Amir Eshel, commander of the Israeli Air Force, as they stand next to a David's Sling launcher system during a ceremony in which Israel declared its "David's Sling" intermediate-range air defence shield fully operational, at Hatzor air base in southern Israel April 2, 2017. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel would use all its strength from the start in any new war with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the chief of the Israeli air force said on Wednesday, sending a firm warning a decade after their last conflict.

At the annual Herzliya security conference near Tel Aviv, Major-General Amir Eshel said qualitative and quantitative improvements in the air force since the 2006 Lebanon war meant it could carry out in just two or three days the same number of bombings it mounted in those 34 days of fighting.

“If war breaks out in the north, we have to open with all our strength from the start,” he said, pointing to the likelihood of international pressure for a quick ceasefire before Israel can achieve all its strategic goals.

Israeli politicians and generals have spoken often of an intention to hit hard in Lebanon if war breaks out, in an apparent bid to deter Hezbollah. Eshel said in 2014 that another conflict could see Israeli attacks 15 times more devastating for Lebanon than in 2006.

But at the conference, Eshel noted that “many elements busy achieving their goals” in Syria’s civil war were interested in preventing any fresh hostilities in Lebanon, where Israel says Hezbollah has built up an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets.

Since early in the six-year-old Syria war, Hezbollah’s energies have been focused on propping up President Bashar al-Assad in alliance with Iran and Russia, throwing thousands of its fighters into battle against Syrian rebels.

But the Shi’ite group has not altered its view of Israel as its foremost enemy, and Israel’s military has said it regards Hezbollah in the same way.

CROWDED SKIES

Although Israel has kept to the sidelines of the war in Syria, Israeli aircraft have targeted suspected Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah, operations complicated by Russian and U.S. air activity in the region.

“The skies of the Middle East are a lot more crowded than before, with lots of players,” Eshel said, pointing to the need for the air force to operate “surgically” to avoid “mistakes”.

On the other hand, such strikes, he said, also act as a deterrent to Hezbollah, whose missile capabilities could mean that the air force and the rest of the Israeli military will fight any future Lebanon war with their own bases under attack.

Eshel cautioned residents in southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, to leave their homes if a new conflict erupts, saying the Iranian-backed group uses civilian homes as “launching bases for missiles and rockets”

About 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them troops fighting Hezbollah, were killed in the 2006 war, which displaced a million people in Lebanon and up to 500,000 in Israel.

(Editing by Luke Baker and Andrew Heavens)

Protesters rally against Islamic law in dozens of U.S. cities

People hold signs while participating in an event called "March Against Sharia" in New York City, U.S.

By David DeKok and Tom James

HARRISBURG, Pa./SEATTLE (Reuters) – Protesters held rallies across the United States on Saturday to denounce sharia law, the Islamic legal and moral code that organizers say poses a threat to American freedoms, but critics believe anti-Muslim hatred is behind the condemnation.

ACT for America, a self-described grassroots organization focusing on national security, staged rallies in New York, Chicago, Boston, Denver and Seattle, as well as many smaller cities. Hundreds of people pledged on social media to attend an event that ACT billed as “March against Sharia.”

On the steps of the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg, barricades and a heavy police presence, including officers mounted on horses, separated about 60 anti-sharia demonstrators from an equal number of counter-protesters. Many of the latter were dressed in black masks and hoods and chanting “No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA.”

The atmosphere was tense but the protest went off with no violence and only one arrest, police said.

More than a dozen men belonging to the anti-government Oath Keepers were on hand, invited by ACT to provide security. Most of them carried handguns.

Chris Achey, 47, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, said he did not hate Muslims but believes that much of Islam is incompatible with Western culture.

“The Constitution is the law of the land,” he said. “We have to be careful with who we let in the country.”

Anti-sharia protesters scuffle with counter demonstrators and members of the Minnesota State Patrol at the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota,

Anti-sharia protesters scuffle with counter demonstrators and members of the Minnesota State Patrol at the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S. June 10, 2017. REUTERS/Adam Bettcher

On its website, ACT described sharia, which covers many aspects of Muslim life including religious obligations and financial dealings, as incompatible with human rights. It said sharia justifies the oppression of women and homosexuality, and advocates female genital mutilation.

But critics say the organization vilifies Muslims and has repeatedly equated Islam with extremism. In their view, the rallies are part of a wave of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment fueled by President Donald Trump, who called for a ban on Muslims entering the country during his election campaign.

Molly Freiburg, 33, of Philadelphia, was one of the counter-protesters but not part of the larger group clad in black.

“America is not in danger from sharia law,” she said. “This manifestation at the Capitol is actually a way to make our Muslim neighbors feel uncomfortable.”

A representative for ACT for America could not be reached for comment.

In Seattle, about 75 anti-sharia protesters were outnumbered by counter-protesters at a rally that was moved from Portland, Oregon. Tensions are running high in Portland after a man yelling religious and racial slurs at two teenage girls on a commuter train fatally stabbed two men who tried to stop him.

Talbot Sleater, a 62-year-old construction foreman, said that the Seattle protest was the first of the kind that he had attended. A Briton who moved to the United States, he said he had decided to go after recent attacks in his home country.

“People are being run over in the street with trucks and little kids are being blown up,” Sleater said, referring to recent attacks in London and Manchester. “I don’t want that to happen here.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country’s largest Muslim advocacy group, urged Americans to participate in one of several local educational events being organized in “a peaceful challenge to Saturday’s hate rallies.”

It also warned Muslims to take extra precautions against potential violence over the weekend.

Anti-Muslim incidents rose 57 percent last year, including a 44 percent jump in anti-Islamic hate crimes, CAIR said in a report released in early May.

Oath Keepers said on its website that it was “answering the call to defend free speech against those who would use terrorist violence or the threat of violence to shut it down.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center says Oath Keepers is “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the United States,” organized around a “set of baseless conspiracy theories.”

Refuse Fascism, a coalition of activists advocating confrontational tactics to oppose what it calls the Trump “regime,” said it would show up at the rallies “to counter the xenophobic hatred and lies, defy intimidation and drown it out.”

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Frank McGurty in New York; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Mary Milliken and Chizu Nomiyama)

Man charged with threats to Jewish groups to plead guilty: U.S. prosecutor

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A former U.S. journalist is expected to plead guilty to a cyberstalking charge related to making bomb threats against Jewish organizations in the United States in a plot to get revenge against his ex-girlfriend, prosecutors said in letter filed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.

Juan Thompson, 32, is set to appear in court next Monday morning to enter a guilty plea, according to the letter, submitted by Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim in Manhattan.

Thompson’s attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment. Before his extradition to New York, he denied the charges, said he had no anti-Semitic beliefs and said he was being framed and targeted as a black man.

“Make no mistake: this is a modern-day lynching,” he said in a telephone interview from the Warren County jail in Missouri.

The prosecution’s letter did not give details about the planned plea, which will not become final until Thompson enters it in court. Thompson was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri on March 3, and has been in custody since then, charged with one count of cyberstalking.

Federal prosecutors have said Thompson engaged in a vicious, months-long harassment campaign against his ex-girlfriend, using various email accounts to accuse her of possessing child pornography, driving drunk and, finally, making bomb threats targeting Jewish groups.

Thompson made some threats in his own name and then accused his ex-girlfriend of framing him, and made other threats posing as her, prosecutors said.

U.S. authorities have been investigating a surge of threats against Jewish organizations, including more than 100 bomb threats against community centers in dozens of states in separate waves since January.

The organizations Thompson threatened included a Jewish museum in New York and the Anti-Defamation League, according to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court. All occurred after the first flood of phone threats in early January.

Thompson was a reporter for the Intercept news website, which fired him last year saying he invented sources and quotes.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

North Korea warns of ‘bigger gift package’ for U.S. after latest test

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the test of a new-type anti-aircraft guided weapon system organised by the Academy of National Defence Science in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) May 28, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test of a new ballistic missile controlled by a precision guidance system and ordered the development of more powerful strategic weapons, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported on Tuesday.

The missile launched on Monday was equipped with an advanced automated pre-launch sequence compared with previous versions of the “Hwasong” rockets, North Korea’s name for its Scud-class missiles, KCNA said. That indicated the North had launched a modified Scud-class missile, as South Korea’s military has said.

The North’s test launch of a short-range ballistic missile landed in the sea off its east coast and was the latest in a fast-paced series of missile tests defying international pressure and threats of more sanctions.

Kim said the reclusive state would develop more powerful weapons in multiple phases in accordance with its timetable to defend North Korea against the United States.

“He expressed the conviction that it would make a greater leap forward in this spirit to send a bigger ‘gift package’ to the Yankees” in retaliation for American military provocation, KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

South Korea said it had conducted a joint drill with a U.S. supersonic B-1B Lancer bomber on Monday. North Korea’s state media earlier accused the United States of staging a drill to practise dropping nuclear bombs on the Korean peninsula.

The U.S. Navy said its aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, also planned a drill with another U.S. nuclear carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, in waters near the Korean peninsula.

A U.S. Navy spokesman in South Korea did not give specific timing for the strike group’s planned drill.

North Korea calls such drills a preparation for war.

Monday’s launch followed two successful tests of medium-to-long-range missiles in as many weeks by the North, which has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented pace in an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the mainland United States.

Such launches, and two nuclear tests since January 2016, have been conducted in defiance of U.S. pressure, U.N. resolutions and the threat of more sanctions.

They also pose one of the greatest security challenges for U.S. President Donald Trump, who portrayed the latest missile test as an affront to China.

“North Korea has shown great disrespect for their neighbor, China, by shooting off yet another ballistic missile … but China is trying hard!” Trump said on Twitter.

PRECISION GUIDANCE

Japan has also urged China to play a bigger role in restraining North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s top national security adviser, Shotaro Yachi, met China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, for five hours of talks near Tokyo on Monday after the North’s latest test.

Yachi told Yang that North Korea’s actions had reached a new level of provocation.

“Japan and China need to work together to strongly urge North Korea to avoid further provocative actions and obey things like United Nations resolutions,” Yachi was quoted as telling Yang in a statement by Japan’s foreign ministry.

A statement from China’s foreign ministry after the meeting made no mention of North Korea.

North Korea has claimed major advances with its rapid series of launches, claims that outside experts and officials believe may be at least partially true but are difficult to verify independently.

A South Korean military official said the North fired one missile on Monday, clarifying an earlier assessment that there may have been more than one launch.

The test was aimed at verifying a new type of precision guidance system and the reliability of a new mobile launch vehicle under different operational conditions, KCNA said.

However, South Korea’s military and experts questioned the claim because the North had technical constraints, such as a lack of satellites, to operate a terminal-stage missile guidance system properly.

“Whenever news of our valuable victory is broadcast recently, the Yankees would be very much worried about it and the gangsters of the south Korean puppet army would be dispirited more and more,” KCNA cited leader Kim as saying.

(Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Additional reporting by James Pearson in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, and Elaine Lies in TOKYO; Editing by Dan Grebler and Paul Tait)

Turkey ready to retaliate against any threats, Erdogan warns

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a statement to reporters alongside U.S President Donald Trump after their meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S. May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey is ready to retaliate if it faces a threat from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and will not shirk from launching a military campaign if need be, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

In his first public address since returning from a visit with U.S. President Donald Trump, Erdogan said he told the United States that Ankara would “exercise its rights under the rules of engagement”, without consulting anyone, if it felt it needed to.

Turkey regards the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union. Washington sees the YPG as distinct from the PKK and as a valuable partner in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

“We are facing a picture where terrorist organizations are constantly supported, strengthened and are confronting us. Turkey is not a country that will consent to such treatment,” Erdogan said in a speech to business leaders in Istanbul.

“With the Euphrates Shield operation we have carried out the first step to foil this plot. After this, we will not hesitate to carry out similar operations whenever we see necessary.”

Ankara launched its “Euphrates Shield” operation inside Syria last year, backing Syrian rebels with tanks, air strikes and special forces to sweep Islamic State from its southern border – and stop the advance of the YPG.

“If these terrorist organizations constitute a threat toward our country, we would do what is necessary by exercising our rights under the rules of engagement. We are telling you this now in advance,” Erdogan said.

“When we take this step, we don’t speak or consult with anyone as we don’t have any time to waste. We would just take the step.”

ENVOY IN FOCUS

Erdogan said he told the United States that Turkey could not be part of the operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State because of the participation of the YPG.

His comments came hours after Ankara said the United States should dismiss its special envoy in the battle against Islamic State, citing his support for the Kurdish militia.

“Brett McGurk, the USA’s special envoy in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State), is definitely and clearly giving support to the PKK and YPG. It would be beneficial if this person is changed,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told NTV television.

Cavusoglu said Trump had understood Turkey’s position, and did not challenge Erdogan when the Turkish president set out his possible response to the YPG.

Differences over Syria policy have caused friction with Washington, a NATO ally of Turkey’s. U.S. officials said this month that the White House had approved supplying arms to the YPG, a decision that caused alarm in Ankara.

Last month, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish fighters in Iraq’s Sinjar region and YPG militia in Syria. Washington voiced concern over the air strikes and said they harmed the coalition’s fight against Islamic State.

Adding to the tension, on Thursday U.S. Senator John McCain called for the expulsion of Turkey’s U.S. ambassador after violence erupted between protesters and Turkish security personnel during Erdogan’s visit.

“We should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America … This kind of thing cannot go unresponded to diplomatically,” McCain, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC in an interview on Thursday, adding that legal action could also be pursued.

Turkey blamed the violence outside its ambassador’s residence on demonstrators linked to the PKK, but Washington’s police chief called it a “brutal attack” on peaceful protesters.

Police said 11 people were injured, including a Washington police officer, and two people were arrested for assault.

(Writing by David Dolan and Dominic Evans; Editing by Ralph Boulton, Larry King)

North Korea sends rare letter of protest over new U.S. sanctions

FILE PHOTO - A North Korean flag flies on a mast at the Permanent Mission of North Korea in Geneva October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea sent a rare letter of protest to the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday warning that a new package of tougher sanctions would only spur its development of nuclear weapons, North Korea’s state media reported.

The protest was lodged by the recently revived Foreign Affairs Committee of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, which said the U.S. House of Representatives was “obsessed” with a sense of disapproval and warned it of dire consequences.

“The U.S. House of Representatives should think twice,” the committee said in its letter, a copy of which was published by the KCNA state news agency.

Tension has been high for weeks over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and fears it will conduct a sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation this month to tighten sanctions by targeting North Korea’s shipping industry and companies that do business it.

The U.S. legislation was intended to cut off supplies of cash that help fund North Korea’s nuclear program, and increase pressure to stop human rights abuses such as the use of slave labor, the bill’s sponsor said.

The North’s committee said it would fail.

“As the U.S. House of Representatives enacts more and more of these reckless hostile laws, the DPRK’s efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrents will gather greater pace, beyond anyone’s imagination,” the committee said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Last month, North Korea reconvened the Foreign Affairs Committee, which was abolished in the late 1990s, in what analysts saw as an attempt to improve relations with the outside world amid its deepening isolation.

The committee is chaired by Ri Su Yong, a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un and a career diplomat.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Robert Birsel)

North Korea demands handover of suspects in assassination plot: Xinhua

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to people attending a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea demanded on Thursday the handover of “terror suspects” who plotted to kill leader Kim Jong Un with a biochemical substance, repeating accusations it made last week that U.S. and South Korean spies were behind the plan.

The North’s KCNA news agency last week accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service of a plot to assassinate its “supreme leadership” with a biochemical weapon.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for weeks, driven by concern that North Korea might conduct its sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“The Central Prosecutor’s Office will ask for the handover of those criminals and prosecute them under the relevant laws,” North Korean vice foreign minister Han Song Ryol told foreign diplomats and reporters in Pyongyang, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

The CIA and the U.S. White House declined to comment on the statement from the North’s Ministry of State Security last week.

The South Korean intelligence service said the charge was “groundless”.

Han “declared the principled stand of the … government to find out all of the terrorist maniacs and mercilessly wipe them out”, the North’s KCNA news agency said in a report on the briefing.

There was no elaboration in either the Xinhua report or the KCNA report on how many suspects North Korea was seeking, or of who or where they were, but Xinhua said North Korea had vowed to “hunt down to the last one of the suspects in every corner of the earth”.

Separately, the CIA said on Wednesday it had established a Korea Mission Center to “harness the full resources, capabilities and authorities of the Agency in addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea”.

The center would gather experienced officers from across the CIA in one entity “to bring their expertise and creativity to bear against the North Korea target”, it said.

(This version of the story adds dropped word “no” in paragraph eight.)

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Colorado school cancels classes over threat after Trump piñata incident

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) – A Colorado high school canceled classes on Monday following an unspecified online threat, authorities said, days after a Spanish teacher there was suspended over allegations he allowed students to strike a piñata depicting President Donald Trump.

Activities at Roosevelt High School in the town of Johnstown, about 40 miles north of Denver, were put on hold out of an abundance of caution, Martin Foster, superintendent of the Johnstown-Milliken school district, said in a statement.

“Recent tragedies around the country and in our own state have heightened everyone’s concern for the safety of students,” Foster said. He did not say if the threat was related to the piñata incident.

Colorado has been the scene of several school shootings and threats, most notably the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, where two students fatally shot a teacher and 12 students before committing suicide.

Foster said he became aware last Friday of social media posts of a Cinco De Mayo event at the school where a photograph of Trump was affixed to a piñata. Cinco De Mayo is an annual celebration commemorating the Mexican army’s defeat of French forces at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

“This was an incredibly disrespectful act that does not reflect the values of Roosevelt High School or the school district,” Foster said.

The teacher, whom the district has not publicly identified, has been placed on paid administrative leave while the incident is investigated, Foster said.

Classes and other activities will resume on Tuesday with an increased police presence at the school, Assistant Superintendent Jason Seybert said by telephone.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Editing by Ben Klayman and Peter Cooney)

Islamic State leader in Egypt tells Muslims to avoid Christian gatherings

People react to Christian deaths

CAIRO (Reuters) – Islamic State’s leader in Egypt has warned Muslims to stay away from Christian gatherings as well as government, military and police facilities, suggesting that the militant group will keep up attacks on what he referred to as “legitimate targets”.

In April, two Islamic State suicide bombers killed at least 45 people at churches in the cities of Alexandria and Tanta, one of the bloodiest attacks the country has experienced in years.

“We are warning you to stay away from Christian gatherings, as well as the gatherings of the army and the police, and the areas that have political government facilities,” the leader, who was not named, said in an interview in Islamic State’s Al Naba weekly newspaper published on Telegram.

Islamist militants are increasingly targeting religious minorities, a challenge to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has promised to protect them from extremism.

Islamic State has been turning its sights on targets outside its base in the Sinai, putting more pressure on the government and presenting extra challenges for security services.

(Reporting by Mostafa Hashem; Writing by Maha El Dahan; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Defiant North Korea hints at nuclear tests to boost force ‘to the maximum’

People watch a TV broadcasting of a news report on North Korea's missile launch, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea.

By Soyoung Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea suggested on Monday it will continue its nuclear weapons tests, saying it will bolster its nuclear force “to the maximum” in a “consecutive and successive way at any moment” in the face of what it calls U.S. aggression and hysteria.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said a “major, major conflict” with North Korea is possible over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, while China said last week the situation on the Korean peninsula could escalate or slip out of control.

In a show of force, the United States has sent the nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to waters off the Korean peninsula to join drills with South Korea to counter a series of threats of destruction from North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

“Now that the U.S. is kicking up the overall racket for sanctions and pressure against the DPRK, pursuant to its new DPRK policy called ‘maximum pressure and engagement’, the DPRK will speed up at the maximum pace the measure for bolstering its nuclear deterrence,” a spokesman for North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency.

North Korea’s “measures for bolstering the nuclear force to the maximum will be taken in a consecutive and successive way at any moment and any place decided by its supreme leadership,” the spokesman said.

Reclusive North Korea has carried out five nuclear tests and a series of missile tests in defiance of U.N. Security Council and unilateral resolutions. It has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented rate and is believed to have made progress in developing intermediate-range and submarine-launched missiles.

It test-launched a missile on Saturday which Washington and Seoul said was unsuccessful, but which nevertheless drew widespread international condemnation.

‘TOP PRIORITY’

South Korea said the United States had reaffirmed it would shoulder the cost of deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter the North Korean threat, days after Trump said Seoul should pay for the $1 billion battery.

In a telephone call on Sunday, Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, reassured his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, that the U.S. alliance with South Korea was its top priority in the Asia-Pacific region, the South’s presidential office said.

Trump, asked about his message to North Korea after the latest missile test, told reporters: “You’ll soon find out,” but did not elaborate on what the U.S. response would be.

Trump stepped up his outreach to allies in Asia over the weekend to discuss the North Korean threat and make sure all are “on the same page” if action is needed, a top White House official said.

“There is nothing right now facing this country and facing the region that is a bigger threat than what is happening in North Korea,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told ABC’s “This Week.”

The THAAD deployment has drawn protests from China, which says the powerful radar that can penetrate its territory will undermine regional security, and from residents of the area in which it is being deployed, worried they will be a target for North Korean missiles.

The United States is seeking more help from China, the North’s major ally, to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development. Trump, in the Reuters interview, praised Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as a “good man”.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for weeks over fears the North may conduct a long-range missile test, or its sixth nuclear test, around the time of the April 15 anniversary of its state founder’s birth.

North Korea, technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, regularly threatens to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea and has said before it will pursue its nuclear and missile programs to counter perceived U.S. aggression.

(Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Robert Birsel)