U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday the U. N. Security Council has run out of options on containing North Korea’s nuclear progr
WASHINGTON – U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday the U. N. Security Council has run out of options on containing North Korea’s nuclear program and the United States may have to turn the matter over to the Pentagon.
“We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we can do at the Security Council at this point,” Haley told CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that she was perfectly happy to hand the North Korea problem over to Defense Secretary James Mattis.
As world leaders head to the United Nations headquarters in New York for the annual General Assembly meeting this week, Haley’s comments indicated the United States was not backing down from its threat of military action against North Korea.
North Korea launched a missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday in defiance of new U. N. Security Council sanctions banning its textile exports and capping imports of crude oil.
China has urged the United States to refrain from making threats to North Korea. Asked about President Donald Trump’s warning last month that the North Korean threat to the United States will be met with “fire and fury,” Haley said, “It was not an empty threat.”
“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed. And we all know that. And none of us want that. None of us want war,” she said on CNN.
“We’re trying every other possibility that we have, but there’s a whole lot of military options on the table,” she said.
