US: N Korea missile launch would be a huge mistake

US secretary of state John Kerry has warned North Korea it would be a “huge mistake” to test launch a medium-range missile.

He said the US would never accept the reclusive country as a nuclear power.

After talks with South Korea’s president and the leaders of its 28,000-strong US military contingent, Kerry also said it was up to China, North Korea’s sole major ally, to “put some teeth” into efforts to press Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Kerry played down an assessment from the Pentagon’s intelligence agency that the North already had a nuclear missile capacity.

The US, he said, wanted to resume talks about North Korea’s earlier pledges to halt its nuclear programme. But he also stressed that Washington would defend its allies in the region if necessary and said Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, “needs to understand, as I think he probably does, what the outcome of a conflict would be”.

North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which were its “treasured” guarantor of security.

Kerry’s visit coincided with preparations for Monday’s anniversary of North Korean founder Kim Il-Sung’s birth date, a possible pretext for a show of strength, with speculation focusing on a possible new missile test launch.

Kerry — who flies to China today and to Japan tomorrow — said that if North Korea’s leader went ahead with the launch, “he will be choosing, willfully, to ignore the entire international community”.

“I would say ahead of time that it is a huge mistake for him to choose to do that because it will further isolate his country and further isolate his people, who frankly are desperate for food, not missile launches.”

The North has issued weeks of shrill threats of an impending war following the imposition of UN sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February. Kerry said the threats were “simply unacceptable” by any standard.

Kerry later told US executives in Seoul that China was in a position to press for a change in the North’s policy.

But Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party, said Pyongyang would never abandon its nuclear programme.