North Korea’s ‘global threat’ requires global response: NATO chief

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg addresses a news conference during a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, October 27, 2016. (REUTERS)

LONDON: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday that North Korea’s nuclear and missile program represented a “global threat and requires a global response.”
In an interview with the BBC, he also refused to say whether an attack on the Pacific US territory of Guam would trigger the military alliance’s collective defense clause.
“The reckless behavior of North Korea is a global threat and requires a global response, and that of course also includes NATO,” Stoltenberg told “The Andrew Marr Show.”
“We call on Korea to abandon its nuclear programs, it’s missile programs, and to refrain from more testing, because this is a blatant violation of several UN security resolutions and it’s a threat to international peace and stability.”
Asked whether a strike against Guam would be covered under the clause that commits NATO members to come to the defense of each other, he said: “I will not speculate about whether Article Five will be applied in such a situation.
“What I will say is we are now totally focused on how can we contribute to a peaceful solution of the conflict.”
Meanwhile, sources said ethnic Koreans living in Japan are nervously watching growing tensions over North Korea and are wary of a possible backlash against their community.
While public antipathy toward Koreans does not appear to have escalated, the community has been the target of abuse by Japanese nationalists after similar incidents in the past.
In the western Japanese city of Osaka — home to the country’s largest population of ethnic Koreans — few are willing to talk publicly about North Korea, and those that do have mixed views on Pyongyang’s actions.
Pu Kyon Ja, owner of the store selling Korean traditional clothes and a second-generation Korean resident in Japan, said she felt the North’s pursuit of nuclear weapons was a natural reaction against threats from the US.
“I can’t say this loudly but I secretly think well done” on North Korea’s development of missile and nuclear capabilities, she said. North Korea is “under great pressure (from the international society), which I believe should end.”