US warns China over N Korea, says keeps eye on it
The United States has called on China to put an end to "business as usual" with North Korea following Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test, stressing that the US military will closely watch the North.
Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Washington that he spoke by phone Thursday with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. He said that China's approach to North Korea had failed.
"Now China had a particular approach that it wanted to make and we agreed and respected to give them the space to be able to implement that, but today in my conversation with the Chinese I made it very clear, that has not worked and we cannot continue business as usual," Kerry said.
The UN Security Council has pledged new sanctions against North Korea after its purported hydrogen bomb test on Wednesday. China has a pivotal position as it is a permanent council member and the North's main trading partner.
American military experts have accused North Korean officials of exaggerating their claims of successfully detonating the nation's first hydrogen bomb.
Kenneth W. Ford, an American physicist who worked on the first American hydrogen bomb, told the New York Times on Thursday that, compared to American H-bombs, the alleged North Korean bomb created too small of an earthquake.
Now former US Army psychological warfare officer Scott Bennett tells Press TV that the United States may have inflated North Korea’s claim of an H-bomb test for any future response on the part of Washington.
Eye on North Korea
This is while US Navy Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, commander of the 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan, says the Navy is watching North Korea closely after the country conducted its fourth nuclear test.
Aucoin told reporters Friday morning that the Navy has ships in the area and is monitoring the North very closely, adding that he could not be more specific.
He says, "We want them to abandon any nuclear activities and comply with the international commitments and obligations. Until they do that they're not going to achieve prosperity, they're not going to achieve the security they desire. They're going to live in isolation."
Aucoin was speaking aboard the USS Ronald Reagan at the Yokosuka naval base.
North Korea says it is prepared for more sanctions but will not abandon its nuclear program, with the state news agency stressing that the country has now “proudly joined the advanced ranks of nuclear weapons states.”
Only five countries are officially known to possess thermonuclear weapons-- the US, Russia, Britain, France and China.
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