“Another war on the Korean Peninsula must not happen,” Kang Kyung-wha said during an interview with Lester Holt in Seoul that will air Monday on “NBC Nightly News.”

“A resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue must be pursued in a peaceful, diplomatic manner.”

Trump was due to arrive early Tuesday in Seoul — where the subject of how to tackle North Korea’s totalitarian dictator is expected to be at the top of the agenda.

The president has threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea and warned that he may be forced to “totally destroy” the rogue state.

Trump was due to arrive early Tuesday in Seoul — where the subject of how to tackle North Korea’s totalitarian dictator is expected to be at the top of the agenda.

The president has threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea and warned that he may be forced to “totally destroy” the rogue state.

Pyongyang’s foreign minister in September stated that Trump had “declared war” on his country and that Kim’s regime would consider shooting down American bombers. The White House later described the notion that the U.S. had declared war “absurd.”

North Korean officials last year also stated the country could seek to target the U.S. mainland if American nuclear forces mobilized against it.

But Kang warned that “we need to be very careful about military options,” adding that they “are there to give strength to diplomacy.”

“This is a country that grew out of the total devastation of the Korean War, and over a matter of six, seven decades we’ve become a thriving democracy … and a thriving market economy,” the foreign minister said. “The idea that another war could wipe that out is just unimaginable.”

A key U.S. ally, South Korea is home to more than 50 million people. Some 28,000 American troops are stationed in the country. Seoul, its capital, is just 30 miles from the North Korean border and in range of thousands of artillery pieces that are trained on the city.

North and South Korea are technically still in a state of conflict since the Korean War ended in an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, in 1953. In the decades since the Koreas were partitioned, the North has become an impoverished, militarized pariah, while the South has embraced technology, capitalism and deep ties with the Western world.

The Pentagon has warned that the only way to locate and destroy with complete certainty all components of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is through a ground invasion.

And a high-profile defector last week said that North Korean military officers have been trained to trigger a devastating counterstrike if their country were attacked by the United States. Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho warned U.S. lawmakers that they would “press the button without further instructions” and suggested that military action against Kim would almost certainly result in a catastrophic number of civilian casualties.

There are about 18,000 civil defense shelters across South Korea. While they would offer protection against North Korea’s conventional weapons, they are not designed to withstand a nuclear or chemical attack.

A report by the Congressional Research Service released last month estimates that as many as 25 million people on either side of the border, including more than 100,000 U.S. citizens, could be affected by an escalation of a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea has conducted about 20 ballistic missile tests this year in defiance of U.N. resolutions, including two intercontinental ballistic missile tests that experts said suggest that a missile could reach parts of the United States. On Sept. 3, Pyongyang conducted its sixth nuclear test.

However, Kang highlighted a month-and-a-half lull in “provocations,” suggesting that the “message is getting through” to North Korea.

In Japan earlier Monday, Trump called Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions and weapons tests a “threat to the civilized world and international peace and stability.”

“The era of strategic patience is over,” he told journalists in Tokyo alongside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Trump has previously said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with Kim, belittling previous negotiation efforts and adding that “only one thing will work.”

Kang said Trump’s comments on Kim in recent months were an “indication of his strong, strong desire to come to terms with this, to resolve this once and for all.”

And while the foreign minister acknowledged that some of Trump’s rhetoric had raised anxieties in South Korea, she stressed that her government was focused on the president’s “overall tone.”

North Korea has said in public statements that it wants an official end to the Korean War. It also wants nothing short of full normalization of relations with the U.S. and to be treated with respect and as an equal in the global arena.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/war-kim-jong-un-must-not-happen-south-korea-says-n817836

The post War With Kim Jong Un ‘Must Not Happen,’ South Korea Says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster was on Capitol Hill Wednesday evening briefing top Republican lawmakers on the administration’s forthcoming announcement.

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told reporters of the planned Friday speech.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also been briefing key lawmakers on the administration’s plans for the agreement, and met with Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, today at the State Department, according to a congressional aide.

As ABC News has previously reported, President Trump is expected to “decertify” the Iran nuclear deal forged by the Obama administration and declare that it no longer serves U.S. national security interests.

That decision not to certify the agreement would give Congress 60 days to re-impose sanctions against Iran that were suspended in 2015 as part of the agreement.

Trump expected to ‘decertify’ Iran nuclear deal next week

What Trump’s top officials have said about the Iran deal

Trump could also ask Congress to impose additional non-nuclear sanctions — such as penalties against Iran’s ballistic missile program — on Iran, which would not end U.S. participation in the nuclear agreement. He could also ask lawmakers to amend the existing law requiring he re-certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement every 90 days.

Top officials on the Trump national security team, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, have said Iran has technically complied with the nuclear deal.
Republicans critical of the initial deal have urged the administration to enforce it.

“As flawed as the deal is, I believe we must now enforce the hell out of it,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a hearing Wednesday. “Let’s work with allies to make certain that international inspectors have better access to possible nuclear sites, and we should address the fundamental sunset shortcoming, as our allies have recognized.”

Former Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who helped craft and negotiate the agreement with Iran under President Obama, traveled to Capitol Hill Wednesday to brief House Democrats on the nuclear deal and the argument for keeping it in its current form.

ABC’s Ali Rogin contributed to this report.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-make-announcement-fate-iran-nuclear-deal-friday/story?id=50426538

The post Trump to make announcement on fate of Iran nuclear deal Friday first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

NEW YORK – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting here Monday with U.S. President Donald Trump, the first time the two have met since Trump came to Israel in May. Senior Israeli and American officials noted that the meeting, which is scheduled to last an hour, will deal with the Iranian issue and with Trump’s efforts to advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Senior Israeli officials noted that Netanyahu would prefer that the meeting with Trump focus primarily on Iran. Netanyahu will try to persuade the president to work toward withdrawing the United States from the nuclear agreement between Iran and the great powers, which would effectively scuttle it. On October 15 Trump is slated to inform the U.S. Congress if Iran is meeting its obligations under the agreement. Netanyahu wants Trump to announce that the Iranians are not fulfilling their part of the agreement, which would allow Congress to reimpose sanctions on Iran.

Netanyahu’s position contradicts the position of the overwhelming majority of Trump’s senior advisers, as well as the position of Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Senior administration officials are pushing Trump not to pull out of the nuclear agreement and to suffice with steps to increase inspections of Iran’s nuclear installations and to stop its terror activities in the Middle East.

U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who is also encouraging Trump to stick with the agreement, addressed the issue Sunday in an interview with Fox News, saying that the administration is interested in an immediate increase in oversight of Iran. McMaster, however, refrained from saying whether Trump is seeking to void the agreement, or to uphold it but with more meticulous inspections.

“The IAEA has identified and we’ve identified some of these breaches that Iran has then corrected,” he said. “But what does that tell you about Iranian behavior? They’re not just walking up to the line on the agreement. They’re crossing the line at times. So, there has to be much more rigorous enforcement of the deal and we have to recognize the fundamental flaws in this deal.”

Asked if the president would be prepared to “live with the deal,” McMaster answered: “Well, we have to see what live with it means, right? Live with can’t be giving this regime cover to develop a nuclear capability.”
He added that the current agreement “gave all these benefits to the Iranian regime upfront and these benefits they are now using to foment this humanitarian catastrophe in the greater Middle East.”

Tillerson, who is expected to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Zarif for the first time of the countries signed the nuclear deal during a conference in New York, told CBS that Iran is “in technical compliance with the deal,” but is violating the spirit of the agreement through its terror activity throughout the Middle East.

“There clearly was an expectation between the parties, the negotiators from the Western parties as well as Iran, that by dealing with this nuclear threat we would lower the tension between Iran and the rest of the world and we would create conditions for Iran to rejoin the community of nations as a productive country that wants stability and wants peace,” said Tillerson.

“But since the nuclear deal has been concluded what we have witnessed is Iran has stepped up its destabilizing activities in Yemen. It’s stepped up its destabilizing activities in Syria. It exports arms to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. And it continues to conduct a very active ballistic missile program. None of that, I would believe, is consistent with that preamble commitment that was made by everyone,” he said.

On Tuesday Netanyahu is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly, and like many of his previous speeches to that forum he is expected to focus on the Iranian issue. His address, however, is expected to be shorter than his previous ones that generally lasted more than half an hour. During his speech Netanyahu is expected to make a direct appeal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Netanyahu-Trump meeting is expected to also deal with the Palestinian issues and the U.S. president’s effort to find a way to jump-start the peace process. On Wednesday Trump is expected to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the same topic.

Senior White House officials have in recent days been trying to reduce expectations from Trump’s meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas, noting that the president has no intention of trying to bring about a breakthrough in the process during the General Assembly session.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.812825

The post Trump and Netanyahu to Meet Monday, Discuss Iran Nuclear Deal and Israeli-Palestinian Peace first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.