Haley tells UN that North Korea is ‘begging for war’

After test, U.S. seeks tougher sanctions

North Korea is “begging for war,” and the United Nations must exhaust all diplomatic means to halt the expansion of the North’s nuclear program before it’s too late, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Monday.

“Enough is enough,” Haley said, one day after North Korea’s sixth and by far most powerful nuclear test. “We have kicked the can down the road long enough. There is no more road left.”

Haley said the U.S. would be circulating a proposal for new, tougher sanctions, and she dismissed “freeze for freeze” proposals from China and Russia. Those nations are calling for North Korea to halt nuclear development in exchange for a halt in U.S.South Korean joint military exercises and removal of a U.S. anti-missile system from the peninsula.

Haley also sounded a recurring theme from the Trump administration that China must use its sway with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to halt his nuclear program. About 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade is conducted with China.

“The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to ... reckless and dangerous nuclear ambitions,” Haley said.

The U.N. has enacted a series of harsh economic sanctions over more than two decades that have left North Korea as one of the world’s poorest nations, yet have failed to halt Pyongyang’s drive to join the nuclear community. Russia and China have expressed doubt that additional sanctions will move the needle with Kim.

On Sunday, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test and first in almost a year. Pyongyang claimed it tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb that could be transported on a ballistic missile. Details could not be verified immediately, but South Korean officials estimated the blast had a strength of 50 to 100 kilotons — markedly more powerful than previous tests or the bombs dropped by the U.S. on two Japanese cities in World War II.

South Korea responded Monday, firing a ground-to-ground ballistic missile and a longrange, air-to-ground missile from an F-15K fighter at targets in the Sea of Japan, the military said. The simulated targets were designed to replicate the location of the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

Defense Minister Song Young-moo told a South Korean parliamentary session that the country’s leadership is leaning in “a direction that strengthens the military standoff, rather than ... dialogue.”

The simulation came as South Korea’s National Intelligence Service warned its nation’s lawmakers that North Korea might be preparing to test another intercontinental ballistic missile, tied to the anniversary of the regime’s founding set for Saturday or the anniversary of the establishment of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Oct. 10.

President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in talked Monday for the first time since the nuclear test. The leaders agreed to increase the payload of South Korean missiles, Moon’s office said.