Trump on North Korean missile launch: All options on the table
US President Donald Trump said all options were on the table after Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile over Japan earlier on Tuesday. This was the first White House response to what was described as a Pyongyang’s major escalation. "The world has received North Korea’s latest message loud and clear: this regime has signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behavior," Trump said in the statement released by the White House.
"Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table.”
A North Korean diplomat earlier accused the United States of driving the Korean peninsula towards "an extreme level of explosion". He told a UN disarmament forum: “My country has every reason to respond with tough counter-measures as an exercise of its right to self-defense.” He added: “And the US should be fully responsible for the catastrophic consequences.”
