North Korea\u2019s top diplomat said Monday that a weekend tweet by US president Donald Trump was a ‘declaration of war’ and North Korea has the right to retaliate by shooting down US bombers, even in international airspace.<\/p>\n
It was the latest escalation in a week of undiplomatic exchanges between North Korea and the US during the UN General Assembly\u2019s annual ministerial meeting.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters that the United Nations and the international community have said in recent days that they didn\u2019t want ‘the war of words’ to turn into ‘real action.’<\/p>\n
But he said that by tweeting that North Korea\u2019s leadership led by Kim Jong Un ‘won\u2019t be around much longer,’ Trump ‘declared the war on our country.’<\/p>\n
Under the UN Charter, Ri said, North Korea has the right to self-defense and \u201cevery right\u201d to take countermeasures, \u201cincluding the right to shoot down the United States strategic bombers even when they\u2019re not yet inside the airspace border of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours later, the White House pushed back on Ri\u2019s claim, saying: \u201cWe have not declared war on North Korea.\u201d The Trump administration, referring to the tweet, stressed that the US is not seeking to overthrow North Korea\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
US Cabinet officials, particularly Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have insisted that the US-led campaign of diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea is focused on eliminating the pariah state\u2019s nuclear weapons program, not its totalitarian government.<\/p>\n
But the more Trump muddies the picture, the tougher it may become to maintain cooperation with China and Russia, which seek a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis and not a new US ally suddenly popping up on their borders. It also risks snuffing out hopes of persuading Kim\u2019s government to enter negotiations when its survival isn\u2019t assured.<\/p>\n
Trump tweeted Saturday: \u201cJust heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won\u2019t be around much longer!\u201d Trump also used the derisive \u201cRocket Man\u201d reference to Kim in his speech to the UN General Assembly on 19 September , but this time he added the word ‘little.’<\/p>\n
This was not the first time North Korea has spoken about a declaration of war between the two countries. In July 2016, Pyongyang said US sanctions imposed on Kim were \u201ca declaration of war\u201d against the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea – the country\u2019s official name – and it made a similar statement after a new round of UN sanctions in December. The North Korean leader used the words again Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea\u2019s top diplomat said Monday that a weekend tweet by US president Donald Trump was a ‘declaration of war’ and North Korea has the right to retaliate by shooting down US bombers, even in international airspace. It was the latest escalation in a week of undiplomatic exchanges between North Korea and the US during<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[873,874],"class_list":{"0":"post-86","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-says-north-korean-diplomat","9":"tag-trump-tweet-declares-war"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}