WASHINGTON - As a US strike group led by an aircraft carrier steamed toward the Korean peninsula Sunday, a senior official said President Donald Trump has asked to be provided with a range of options for eliminating the North Korean nuclear threat.
Amid rising tensions with North Korea, a US aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson was heading toward the Korean peninsula.
The US Navy said Saturday it had sent a carrier-led strike group to the Korean peninsula in a show of force against North Korea's "reckless" nuclear weapons programme.
The move will raise tensions in the region and comes hard on the heels of a US missile strike on Syria that was widely interpreted as putting Pyongyang on warning over its refusal to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
North Korea denounced Thursday's strike as an act of "intolerable aggression" and one that justified "a million times over" the North's push toward a credible nuclear deterrent.
"US Pacific Command ordered the Carl Vinson Strike Group north as a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific," said Commander Dave Benham, spokesman at US Pacific Command.
"The number one threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability," he told AFP, in an unusually forceful statement.
Originally scheduled to make port calls in Australia, the strike group - which includes the Nimitz-class aircraft supercarrier USS Carl Vinson - is now headed from Singapore to the Western Pacific Ocean. Pyongyang is on a quest to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five nuclear tests, two of them last year.
Expert satellite imagery analysis suggests it could well be preparing for a sixth, with US intelligence officials warning that Pyongyang could be less than two years away from developing a nuclear warhead that could reach the continental United States.
The China-US presidential summit, held at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Thursday and Friday, failed to deliver any concrete agreement on how to rein in North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes between the two nations. China has long been North Korea's primary ally, supporting the hermit state with food, energy and most of its economic trade. In comments to reporters, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the countries had agreed to increase cooperation in pushing North Korea to abandon its weapons programmes, but made it clear that the US was willing to go it alone in tackling the problem.
“President Trump indicated to President Xi ... that we would be happy to work with them, but we understand it creates unique problems for them and challenges and that we would, and are, prepared to chart our own course if this is something China is just unable to coordinate with us," he said.
US National Security Adviser HR McMaster insisted that in the meantime it is "prudent" to send the strike group to the Korean peninsula, criticising North Korea as a rogue, nuclear-armed nation engaged in provocative behavior. "Presidents before and President Trump agreed that that is unacceptable, that what must happen is the denuclearization of the peninsula," McMaster told Fox News.
"The president has asked them to be prepared to give us a full range of options to remove that threat," he added, apparently referring to Trump's advisers.
The White House said Trump spoke Saturday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about the US cruise missile attack on an airbase in Syria and agreed to cooperate more on regional issues including the North Korea nuclear threat.
The head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which provides missile detection for the region, said Thursday she was "extremely confident" of US capability to intercept a potential intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) bound for America from the North.
But General Lori Robinson expressed concerns for the type of ballistic missile powered by a solid-fuel engine that Pyongyang said it successfully tested in February. "Amidst an unprecedented pace of North Korean strategic weapons testing, our ability to provide actionable warning continues to diminish," Robinson said in written testimony to senators.
And while a US unilateral strike on North Korea from a shorter range might be more militarily effective, it likely would endanger many civilians in South Korea, experts warn.