N Korea blasts US for tough remarks on Pyongyang

Pyongyang, March 21: North Korea on Monday blasted the US administration for pressurising Pyongyang with threatening remarks when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Asia recently. Tillerson said on Friday at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul that all options were on the table to resolve the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear issue, including diplomatic, security and economic measures, Xinhua reported. Tillerson said that a so-called “strategic patience” policy toward Pyongyang has ended, referring to the US foreign policy in the past decade under which Washington had refrained from having talks with Pyongyang before its sincere efforts at denuclearisation. The top US diplomat indicated a need for tougher UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear programme and other weapons of mass destruction. “Pyongyang has the will and capability to fully respond to any war the US would like to ignite,” said an unmed spokesman for foreign ministry of North Korea in response to those remarks in a statement released by the state-run news agency KC. (IANS)