Wednesday, 15 February 2017

North Korea’s dictator challenges Donald Trump

IF NORTH KOREA’S test of a ballistic missile on February 12th was intended as a provocation, Donald Trump, unusually, failed to take the bait. For once, the president’s Twitter account stayed silent. When Mr Trump was given the news, he was entertaining Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida. In a joint appearance, Mr Abe described the launch as “absolutely intolerable” and demanded that North Korea comply with a raft of UN Security Council resolutions that have so far done little to restrain its missile and nuclear programmes. Mr Trump did not refer to the missile test directly, but pledged that America would stand “100%” behind “its great ally” Japan.

The statement was far more measured than some of his previous pronouncements on North Korea’s activities. After Kim Jong Un, the country’s leader, gave a typically bombastic New Year address in which he boasted of being in the “final stages” of preparations to test-launch a missile with the range to threaten America, Mr Trump tweeted back: “It won’t happen!” Mr Trump’s retort suggested that any such attempt would be met with a...Continue reading

from Asia http://ift.tt/2lPpctk
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment