Trump praises China's Xi over handling of North Korea
Donald Trump has praised China's President Xi Jinping for his handling of North Korea, calling him "a very good man" who loves his country.
The US president told Reuters he would like to solve the crisis diplomatically but that it was "difficult" and a "major, major conflict" was possible.
He also said it had been "very hard" for Kim Jong-un to take over North Korea at such a young age.
The UN Security Council is meeting to discuss North Korea on Friday.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said China has told the US it will impose sanctions on North Korea if it conducts further nuclear tests.
Shortly after being elected, Mr Trump had accused China of not doing enough to rein in North Korea, and suggested the US could take unilateral action.
But in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters inside the Oval Office, Mr Trump - who met Mr Xi earlier this month - said the Chinese president "certainly doesn't want to see turmoil and death".
"He is a very good man and I got to know him very well.
"He loves China and he loves the people of China. I know he would like to be able to do something, perhaps it's possible that he can't," he said.
- North Korea crisis: Why now, what happened, what next?
- US steps up pressure on Pyongyang
- How mixed signals on North Korea could spell disaster
- Are N Korea's neighbours worried about an attack?
Of Mr Kim, he said: "He's 27 years old. His father dies, took over a regime. So say what you want but that is not easy, especially at that age."
But he stressed he was "not giving him credit", and added: "I hope he's rational."
"There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely," said Mr Trump.
North Korea has carried out repeated missile tests in recent months and is threatening to conduct its sixth nuclear test.
Other developments have escalated tensions in recent weeks:
- North Korea executed a failed missile launch and held a massive military parade in an apparent show of strength
- The US has deployed a group of warships and a submarine to the region
- Pyongyang has reacted angrily to this, threatening a "super-mighty pre-emptive strike"
- The US has begun installing a controversial $1bn (£775m) anti-missile system system called Thaad in South Korea - which Mr Trump said South Korea should pay for. Seoul said on Friday that there was "no change" in its position that the US pays for it
- Mr Tillerson and US Vice President Mike Pence have visited South Korea, reiterating that "all options are on the table" in dealing with the North
Earlier on Thursday, Mr Tillerson told Fox News that China has again urged North Korea to refrain from carrying out more tests.
China banned coal imports from North Korea in February - one of the country's key exports - and is reportedly also considering restricting oil shipments if Pyongyang continues to behave belligerently.
Mr Tillerson is due to chair a UN Security Council foreign ministers meeting on Friday, where he will lobby for existing sanctions against North Korea to be fully implemented to "increase the pressure on the regime," he said.
Earlier, Russia's Vladimir Putin called for the resumption of talks with North Korea as tensions on the peninsula continue to escalate.
Speaking in Moscow, where he met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he urged those involved to "refrain from using belligerent rhetoric".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39741671
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Even the most ardent Trump supporter, after these 100 days, even his tightest jock strap of a supporter (and there are some on this sight...poor bastards), has to admit, if only to themselves, that they know that he is playing this whole foreign policy thing by ear. Simply from day to day. That he does not really have a foreign policy and that he is in so far over his head that he has no idea of what he is doing and would kill to have a Henry Kissinger or a James Baker by his side. Instead he has a troop of amateurish clowns. Not even Ringling Brothers level clowns. But rather Clowns that travel in the very lowest of carnivals and are all drunks and molest children in the towns they go too and hope they can move on before they are caught type clowns. The very lowest of the lowest type of clowns.
Now, this would not be so bad if he had any idea of what he was doing, but the simple truth is that, if any sane Trump supporter would look at him changing his position from day to day and hour to hour, they would know the he hasn't the slightest fucking idea of what he is doing, where he is going or where America is going to end up after he is done. He fucking up by turning the raft our nation and setting on down the Colorado River Gorge and just hoping the our entire country and all it represents and everyone in it will somehow survive the trip without too many of us dead and to many of us wounded and maybe some sort of US Constitution still intact, because the truth is he is so tired of governing right now that all he wants to do is to go back to Trump Tower in New York, order his Mail Order wife around, fondle his servants, watch FOX and friends, tweet and be sure to get his fruit cup before he is tucked into beddy bye time bed.
We have a tired senile old, but very corrupt person running this country and it is far, far, far past the time for Mike Pence and the Cabinet and the Congress to invoke Section Four, of the Twenty Fifth Amendment to our Constitution and declare that he is unfit to govern do to mental incapacity. This must be done before the very childish ego and temperament that he has devolved into drags us into a very bloody war of un-necessity. Where American troops and many innocent civilians will also needlessly die, simply because in his diseased childlike mind he sees them as nothing more then toy soldiers and game pieces on a toy plastic battlefield.
If he is or is not fit to be President is debatable. If he is or is not fit to be Commander in Chief of the most powerful military ever assembled in human history is not. He is not.
One of the things I like about you Randy, is your refusal to exaggerate.
One of the things I like about you Randy, is your refusal to exaggerate.
I know you meant that sarcastically, but I am going to respond seriously. If you have a basement then if things go very, very good between the U.S. and North Korea, then be prepared to live in it for awhile. If you are lucky it will be very limited and the radiation will not affect you. IMHO that is the very best case scenario. If things go really South really fast, which is very possible if there is a shooting war in Korea, then things will almost certainly be much, much worse.
We can hope for the mythical "limited exchange" and hope that sanity returns before it goes beyond that (that limited exchanges mean a limited exchange of about 75 to 100 warheads nuclear worldwide). Casualties in the somewhere of 35,000,000 dead right away, with another 20 to 40 million more expected to die of radiation poisoning few months and another 75 million to have their lives shortened by about 20 years due to cancer that would not have otherwise developed. Of course these are just estimates of 35-40 years ago. We have improved of system much since then and I am sure my quotes are very low. And remember, that is what is called a "limited exchange" and no one, abso-fucking-lutley no one I ever knew in the nuclear weapons field has ever heard of such a creature existing or thinks it does. I sure don't. The very concept of a limited exchange is to launch a few more in exchange and over and over until over ridden by orders. It's like when the cops shoot someone and you find out they put out 30 rounds into some guys gut. Well that what all of the officers on the scene were taught to do. It's the same concept. Once we start launching we can not take the chance that it IS a limited exchange, so we have to keep throwing every last thing we have out there just in case it is NOT a limited change. That's what I meant the other day when I said there is no such thing as a single launch, because it will cause a launch back at us from either Russia or China at one of our cities or major bases, So we will launch a few at theirs and then so on. Then it will get really fast. There will be a full exchange between us, the Russians, the Chinese, the French toward the Russians, the British toward the Chinese. I assume and the Israelis will take the chance to take out the Palestinians and the Pakistanis and Indians will see no reason to save theirs and then every living thing on Earth will die in a matter of about 3 to 4 months, depending on how bad the bombs have changed the Jet stream. But have no doubt. Everything will die. There will be no Mad Max. In about 30 minutes it will all be over.
The Nuclear doomsday clock should be set to 10 seconds and I am not the only one who thinks so.
In about 30 minutes it'll all be over. Hope that you area at a target site. It will be much quicker and completely painless.
I think we should try to not decline into mass hysteria over this situation. It's hard to be rational when that happens.
He's in way over his head.
Xi is a very experienced world leader and statesman, unlike the inexperienced and apparently uneducated (that's what happens when dad buys your education for you. Can he do simple algebra?) buffoon and clown we are stuck with with even had to be told by Xi that no, Korea had never been part of China, something a 5th grade Geography student could have told him. He is the very important key to there being no war on the Korean peninsula, no matter how much Trump's people hush for it as a bloody distraction. Xi can not afford a war between the two Korea's and will do anything, even replacing Kin Jung Un as the North Korean leader by stealthy force to stop it.
It should not come to that. With the power that Xi is excising over Un. More then he has ever done before. I believe he is reeling hm in and I think Xi thinks so too. The question is does Un think so? If on the other hand Un fucks up then all we have to do is to sit back and wait a short time until, as the bible says, Un feels the power of "his terrible swift sword". It is much, much, much better if Xi takes out North Korea's nuclear weapons production capabilities then if the West does and that is an inescapable truth that Xi knows to all too Let us hope the diapered Dumbo in Washington has had that truth beaten into him now and and lets thing happen in Korea without going nuts and SHUTS THE FUCK UP! I MEAN DOESN'T ANYONE HAVE GAG FOR THIS STUPID FUCK FOR WHEN IT COMES TO TALKING ABOUT KOREA? OR ANYTHING ELSE IMPORTANT?
MAKE AMERICA GREAT (IT ALREADY WAS) BY JUST SHUTTING TRUMP THE FUCK UP!!!
Trump is using a very simple and effective method of handling his finances, politics, and now foreign policy. All he does is decide where he wants to be and he marches in that direction unless and until somebody stops him. He dismisses advice that something can't work because, to him, it works until it doesn't. Alexander the Great and Genghis khan conquered the world that way.
China is playing a much more subtle and sophisticated game, attempting to win without fighting (as Sun Tzu teaches). Xi wants to restart the six party talks, not restart the Korean War. He will not engage in regime change just to please Trump because China has objected to regime change as a violation of international law. China will also not let Trump meddle in its backyard and collapse a buffer state (although China is not happy with Kim). If it comes down to it, China will act militarily to keep Trump out of North Korea just like it did in the Korean War (no matter how unhappy China is with Kim). But, being sane, they'd like to resolve it diplomatically. So Xi is playing Trump by being friendly with him to slow him down, get him to listen to reason, and change his direction. China and Russia will work in tandem on the security council to protect their own interests (blunt Kim/redirect Trump).
Do you really think they would be willing to enter into a shooting war considering how erratic Trump is and might go nuclear?
No, I think they believe that war is unnecessary. China will not remove Kim because it would violate international law and, even if it didn't, Kim protects China's southern flank. China won't let Trump make it more vulnerable to a US attack by removing a buffer. We'd probably have the same view if China occupied Mexico because it didn't like a Mexican dictator threatening them. So the real question is whether we'll risk war with China rather than try a peaceful alternative like restarting the six party talks.
I am all in favor of restarting the Six Party Talks, but I think that Trump is unstable when it comes to North Korea and is more likely to start a war with them at the drop of a missile in the Sea of Japan (which IMHO is not an emergency and if he wants to go after NK he HAS to go through Congress first for authorization!), then them starting a war with us. I think that if it looks like that might happen then China will not exactly remove Un, as much as they will replace hm with a more even tempered and malleable "Dear Leader" of their choosing and still keep North Korea as a buffer.
China has no more control over the internal operation of NK than we do over Israel. Once we show them how to magically replace Netanyahu then maybe they can use the same spell to replace Kim.