HANOI – US secretary of state Hillary Clinton urged Asia yesterday to enforce tough sanctions against North Korea, which hit back by threatening a “physical response” to Washington’s plans for joint military drills with South Korea.
Mrs Clinton, speaking in Hanoi at the Asia-Pacific region’s biggest security dialogue, also called on Burma’s neighbours to pressure the country’s military rulers for democratic reforms, and said Asia must join the global community in sending a “clear signal” to Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.
“One measure of the strength of a community of nations is how it responds to threats to its members, neighbours and region,” Mrs Clinton told the 27-member Asean Regional Forum, which includes regional powers China, Japan and Russia, along with the US, EU and Canada.
Mrs Clinton unveiled new US sanctions this week against North Korea, which is blamed by both Washington and Seoul for the March sinking of South Korean warship the Cheonan, in which 46 sailors were killed and which sharpened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
A North Korean diplomat said Washington’s new sanctions and the US-South Korean drills would be met with a “physical response”, and that charges that it had torpedoed the Cheonan had pushed the peninsula “to the brink of explosion”. “There will be a physical response to the steps imposed by the United States militarily,” Ri Tong-il, a member of Pyongyang’s delegation in Hanoi, told reporters. The military exercises, he added, would violate North Korean sovereignty.
Mrs Clinton said it was essential that Asian nations enforce sanctions to encourage North Korea “to take the steps it must” to stop nuclear development and seek real peace. – (Reuters)