US ‘locked and loaded’ on North Korea: Trump

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Friday said that the country’s military is “locked and loaded” to deal with North Korea, ramping up the rhetorical brinkmanship.

“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong-un will find another path!” Trump said on Twitter.

He spoke as North Korea accused him of “driving” the Korean peninsula to the “brink of a nuclear war”.

At the centre of the geopolitical storm is the tiny island of Guam, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean. It’s home to a US Navy base and the Andersen Air Force Base, from which US B-1B bombers conducted sorties over the Korean peninsula earlier this week, provoking the ire of Pyongyang’s leadership and an escalating war of words between the US and North Korea.

On Thursday, North Korean state media KCNA said military leaders were working on a proposal to launch four intermediate-range Hwasong-12 missiles into the sea less than 25 miles off Guam’s coast.

Reacting to it Trump said that his earlier threat to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea may not have gone far enough.

“Maybe it wasn’t tough enough,” Trump said on Thursday.

Trump said past administrations had not done enough to take on North Korea and that it is time a President “stuck up for the country”. (IANS)