U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Monday asked the body’s Security Council to impose the strongest possible sanctions against North Korea in response to the rogue nation’s most recent nuclear test, saying “the time for half measures … is over.”
Haley spoke at U.N. headquarters in New York a day after North Korea claimed to have conducted an underground test on a hydrogen bomb.
It was the country’s sixth such test, following five previous ones on a nuclear warhead and recent launches of inter-continental missiles to land such weapons on foreign soil.
“We cannot kick this can down the road any longer,” said Halley at a special U.N. meeting, convened after the weapon test overnight Saturday.
Her statements follow President Trump a day earlier condemned the test in the strongest terms.
“North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success,” Trump said in one of several tweets Sunday.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said later in the day, in a White House meeting on the matter, that any threats by North Korea to the United State or its allies will be met with an “effective and overwhelming” military response.
North Korea is “begging for war,” Haley also said Sunday. “The time for half measures by the Security Council is over.”
And like Trump and other top administration officials, she also said the U.S. intends to impose economic sanctions on countries that do business with North Korea.
