US warns North Korea on reckless provocations

The Obama administration on Tuesday warned North Korea to halt a recent spate of "unacceptable" rhetoric and actions that Secretary of State John Kerry called "provocative, dangerous and reckless." Kerry also vowed that the United States would defend itself and its allies South Korea and Japan from North Korean threats.

"We have heard an extraordinary amount of unacceptable rhetoric from the North Korean government in the last few days," Kerry told reporters at a joint news conference with visiting South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

"The bottom line very simply is that what Kim Jong-Un has been choosing to do is provocative, it is dangerous, reckless, and the United States will not accept the DPRK as a nuclear state," Kerry said, referring to North Korea's young new leader and the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"The United States will do what is necessary to defend us and ourselves and our allies," he said. "We are fully prepared and capable of doing so and the DPRK understands that."
His comments came as North Korea ratcheted up an almost daily string of threats toward the U.S., South Korea and Japan with an announcement earlier Tuesday that it would revive a long-dormant nuclear reactor and ramp up production of atomic weapons material.
A North Korean official said the country would quickly begin "readjusting and restarting" the facilities at its main Nyongbyon nuclear complex, including the plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant, which was shuttered as part of international nuclear disarmament talks in 2007 that have since stalled.
Kerry said such a step would be "a direct violation" of North Korea's international commitments.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that development would be "extremely alarming" while the White House said President Barack Obama's entire national security team was focused on North Korea.

However, U.S. officials did cast doubt on whether North Korea would follow through, portraying the latest threat as part of a pattern of antagonistic taunts that, so far, have not been backed up by action.
"There's a long way to go between a stated intention and actually being able to pull it off," Nuland said.

Website: http://news.yahoo.com/us-warns-nkorea-reckless-provocations-214344745--politics.html