President Donald Trump expressed frustration with China on Wednesday for failing to do more to cut off support to North Korea and exert pressure to curb its nuclear pursuits.<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump expressed frustration with China on Wednesday for failing to do more to cut off support to North Korea and exert pressure to curb its nuclear pursuits.
North Korea\u2019s intercontinental ballistic missile test this week demonstrated a dangerous new reach for weapons it hopes to top with nuclear warheads one day.
The launch is spurring US demands for global action to counter the threat.
Since he entered the White House, Trump has talked about confronting Pyongyang and pushing China to increase pressure on the North, but neither strategy has produced fast results. Trump had expressed optimism after his first meeting with China\u2019s President Xi Jinping that the two would work together to curb North Korea\u2019s nuclear program.
Moments before he departed for Poland, Trump chastised China on Twitter.
\u201cTrade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter, \u201d the president tweeted. \u201cSo much for China working with us \u2013 but we had to give it a try!\u201d
In his initial response to the launch on Monday evening, Trump urged China on Twitter to \u201cput a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!\u201d But he also said it was \u201chard to believe\u201d that South Korea and Japan, the two US treaty allies most at risk from North Korea, would \u201cput up with this much longer.\u201d
North Korea conducts about 90 percent of its trade through China. In April, Chinese customs data said total two-way trade between China and North Korea increased 36.8 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period a year earlier.
Raw data from the first quarter of this year, however, showed that total two-way trade between the sides increased by only a 7.4 percent in this first quarter. It was not immediately clear why the customs agency reported a higher growth rate.
China has long resisted intensifying economic pressure on neighboring North Korea, in part out of fear of the instability that could mount on its doorstep, and Trump has not found a way to break through Beijing\u2019s old habits.
Trump spoke with Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday, discussing North Korea and its nuclear program with both leaders. He will meet them both this week at the Group of 20 meeting in Germany, as well as have his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
US officials joined South Korea and Japan in requesting an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, scheduled Wednesday afternoon.
Previously, North Korea had demonstrated missiles of short and medium range.
In a show of force directly responding to North Korea\u2019s provocation, US and South Korean soldiers fired \u201cdeep strike\u201d precision missiles into South Korean territorial waters on Tuesday, US military officials in Seoul said. The missile firings demonstrated US-South Korean solidarity, the US Eighth Army said in a statement.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson vowed \u201cstronger measures to hold the DPRK accountable, \u201d using an acronym for the isolated nation\u2019s formal name, and said: \u201cGlobal action is required to stop a global threat.\u201d Any country helping North Korea militarily or economically, taking in its guest workers or falling short on Security Council resolutions, he said, \u201cis aiding and abetting a dangerous regime.\u201d
Tillerson\u2019s statement, issued Tuesday evening as most Americans were celebrating the Fourth of July holiday, notably did not mention China, whose help the Trump administration has been aggressively seeking to press Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program.
In recent days, as the North has continued to test missiles in defiance of global pressure, President Donald Trump has started voicing doubt that Beijing is up to the task. His administration has taken a number of steps against China\u2019s interests that have suggested its patience has run short.
Tillerson\u2019s comments were the first public confirmation by the United States that the missile was indeed an ICBM, constituting a major technological advancement for the North and its most successful missile test yet.
The prime danger from the US viewpoint is the prospect of North Korea pairing a nuclear warhead with an ICBM. The latest US intelligence assessment is that the North probably does not yet have that capability \u2014 putting a small-enough nuclear warhead atop an ICBM.
Initial US military assessments had been that it was an intermediate-range missile. NORAD, or the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the missile did not pose a threat to North America.
The launch was not wholly unexpected. Daniel Coats, director of national intelligence, testified to Congress in May that the US anticipated an ICBM test before the end of this year.
The Pentagon has spent tens of billions of dollars developing a missile defense system tailored to the North Korean ambition of attaining the eventual capability to attack the US with a nuclear-armed missile. On May 30 the Pentagon successfully shot down a mock warhead designed to replicate the North Korean threat.
Pentagon spokeswoman Dana W. White said the US-South Korea missile exercise Tuesday was meant to show \u201cour precision fire capability.\u201d
\u201cWe remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies and to use the full range of capabilities at our disposal against the growing threat from North Korea, \u201d she said in a statement. \u201cThe United States seeks only the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Our commitment to the defense of our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan, in the face of these threats, remains ironclad.<\/p>\n