Kerry says U.S. ready to "reach out" to North Korea

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday stressed the United States is willing to engage with North Korea as long as it takes steps to give up nuclear weapons.

He also vowed the United States would protect its Asian allies against any provocative acts by the North, but said Washington wants a peaceful solution to rising tensions in the region.

"We are prepared to reach out but we need (the) appropriate moment, appropriate circumstance," Kerry said, adding that North Korea had to take steps towards giving up its nuclear programs.

"They have to take some actions. Now how many and how much I want to have a discussion with folks back in Washington (about)... but they have to take action," Kerry told a small group of reporters.

The North has threatened for weeks to attack the United States,South Korea and Japan since new U.N. sanctions were imposed in response to its latest nuclear arms test in February. Speculation has mounted of a new missile launch or nuclear test.

"I think it is really unfortunate that there has been so much focus and attention in the media and elsewhere on the subject of war, when what we really ought to be talking about is the possibility of peace. And I think there are those possibilities," Kerry earlier told a news conference in Tokyo after a meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida.

Kerry was in Japan for the final stop on an Asian tour aimed at solidifying support for curbing North Korea's nuclear program, and reassuring U.S. allies.

Kerry said the United States would "do what was necessary" to defend its allies Japan and South Korea, but added: "Our choice is to negotiate, our choice is to move to the table and find a way for the region to have peace."

Kerry also sought to clarify his comments made in Beijing on Saturday, which some took to suggest he might be offering to remove recently boosted missile defense capabilities in Asia if Chinapersuaded North Korea to abandon its atomic programs.

The Pentagon in recent weeks has announced plans to position two Aegis guided-missile destroyers in the western Pacific and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to Guam.

"The president of the United States deployed some additional missile defense capacity precisely because of the threat of North Korea. And it is logical that if the threat of North Korea disappears because the peninsula denuclearizes, then obviously that threat no longer mandates that kind of posture. But there have been no agreements, no discussions, there is nothing actually on the table with respect to that," Kerry said.

Japan's Kishida told the same news conference that the two allies want Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

"We agreed that North Korea should cease provocative speech and behavior and show it is taking concrete action toward denuclearisation," he said. "We cannot allow North Korea in any way to possess nuclear weapons."

NORTH KOREA UNBENDING

Pyongyang, which was preparing to celebrate the birth date of state founder Kim Il-Sung on Monday, reiterated it had no intention of abandoning its atomic arms programs.

"We will expand in quantity our nuclear weapons capability, which is the treasure of a unified Korea ... that we would never barter at any price," Kim Young-nam, North Korea's titular head of state, told a gathering of officials and service personnel applauding Kim Il-Sung.

The KCNA news agency also rejected as a "cunning trick" South Korean President Park Geun-hye's suggestion last week of holding talks with the North.

The South Korean capital, Seoul, displayed the calm it has shown throughout the crisis. Residents strolled in bright sunshine a day after the city's World Cup stadium was jammed with 50,000 mostly young fans of local rapper Psy.

On Saturday, Kerry met leaders in China, the North's sole diplomatic and financial benefactor, and said China and the United States were committed to "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner".

During his first stop in South Korea, where the United States has 28,000 troops stationed, Kerry said North Korea, furious at joint U.S.-South Korean military drills, would be making a "huge mistake" if it were to launch a missile.

He also said China was in a position to influence the North's policy and had to put "some teeth" into efforts to persuade Pyongyang to alter its policies.

Japan, separated from North Korea by less than 1,000 km (625 miles) of water and a frequent target of its anger, is well within range of North Korea's medium-range missiles.

Japanese news reports said Tokyo had sent Aegis-class destroyers capable of missile interception to the Sea of Japan. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missiles have been deployed at key locations in the capital and surrounding areas.

Kerry's agenda in Tokyo also included Japan's territorial disputes with China, and the future of U.S. bases in Japan.

He repeated that while Washington took no position about the ultimate sovereignty of tiny isles in the East China Sea claimed by both China and Japan, the United States "opposed any unilateral action that would somehow change the status quo".

A flare-up of the territorial row has raised fears of an unintended military incident near the islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. The United States says the islets fall under a U.S.-Japan security pact, but is keen to avoid a clash in the economically vital region.

Kerry to North Korea: Don't test missile or you will regret

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a stark warning to North Korea on Friday not to test-fire a mid-range missile, while tamping down anxiety caused by a new U.S. intelligence report suggesting significant progress in the communist regime's nuclear weapons program.

Kicking off four days of talks in an East Asia beset by increasing North Korean threats, Kerry told reporters in Seoul that Pyongyang and its enigmatic young leader would only increase their isolation if they launched the missile that American officials believe has a range of some 2,500 miles — or enough to reach the U.S. territory of Guam.

"If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it's across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community," Kerry told reporters. "And it will be a provocation and unwanted act that will raise people's temperatures."

If the trajectory of the test missile suggests that it could be a threat to either the U.S. or allies, the military would move to shoot it down from one of nine warships armed with sophisticated ballistic missile defense systems in the Pacific, including two that were moved closer to the Korean peninsula, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss military plans.

Kerry said the test would be a "huge mistake" for Kim.

"It will further isolate his country and further isolate his people who are desperate for food and not missile launches," he warned. "They are desperate for opportunity and not for a leader to flex his muscles."

Kerry's diplomatic tour, while planned long in advance, is unusual in that it brings him directly to a region of escalated tensions and precisely at a time when North Korea is threatening action. The North often times its military and nuclear tests to generate maximum attention, and Kerry's presence on the peninsula alone risked spurring Pyongyang into another provocation. Another key date is the 101st birthday of the nation's founder, Kim Il Sung, on April 15.

After meeting South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Kerry also weighed in on an intelligence report that rocked Washington on Thursday, suggesting that North Korea now had the knowhow to arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead — even if the weapons would lack reliability. Kerry, repeating assertions by other administration officials, noted that Pyongyang still hadn't developed or fully tested the nuclear capacities needed for such a step.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., surprised a hearing on the defense budget Thursday when he read aloud one paragraph of an otherwise classified Defense Intelligence Agency report. The assessment said the Pentagon's intelligence wing has "moderate confidence" that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles but that the weapon was unreliable.

The disclosure took even Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by surprise and he refused to discuss it at the budget hearing. While analysts have made similar statements over the last two years, the reading of it at the same time Kim was renewing threats against the U.S. and its allies gave the notion new urgency.

Kerry offered strong words of solidarity for South Korea, praising Park's "bright vision" of a prosperous and reunified Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons. By contrast, he said North Korea's Kim, by estimates only 29 or 30 years old, has a choice to make between provocation and returning to talks to de-escalate tension and lead to the end of its nuclear program.

"It's up to Kim Jong Un what he decides to do," Kerry said.

A missile launch, he said, "is not going to change our current position which is very clear: We will defend our allies. We will stand with South Korea and Japan against these threats. And we will defend ourselves."

Speaking beside Kerry, South Korea's Yun called for more United Nations action against Pyongyang if it commits another provocation.

He refused to comment specifically on the U.S. intelligence report, saying only that the North has "high nuclear and missile capabilities" but that it is still some time away from a nuclear bomb that is "small, light and diversified."

Both Yun and Kerry kept the door open for future negotiations with Pyongyang.

But both seemed to suggest that such talks were unlikely in light of the North's increasingly bombastic threats, including nuclear strikes on the United States. Most experts say those are unfeasible based on the North's current capacity and would never be explored seriously because the U.S. response would be overwhelming against a regime focused primarily on survival.

Kerry said any talks with North Korea have to lead toward denuclearization.

They have to be really serious," Kerry said. "No one is going to talk for the sake of talking and no one is going to play this round-robin game that gets repeated every few years, which is both unnecessary and dangerous."

Kerry to meet China's top leaders to discuss North Korea

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meetsChina's top leaders on Saturday in an effort to persuade them to exert pressure on North Korea to scale back its belligerent rhetoric and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.

Travelling to Beijing for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry made no secret of his desire to see China take a more activist stance toward North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States.

As the North's main trading partner, financial backer and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, China has a unique ability to use its leverage against the impoverished, isolated state, Kerry said in the South Korean capital Seoul late on Friday.

"There is no group of leaders on the face of the planet who have more capacity to make a difference in this than the Chinese, and everybody knows it, including, I believe, them," Kerry told U.S. executives.

"They want to see us try to reach an amicable resolution to this," he said. "But you have to begin with a reality, and the reality is that if your policy is denuclearization - and it is theirs as it is ours as it is everybody's except the North's at this moment - if that's your policy, you've got to put some teeth into it," he said.

Kerry is scheduled to see the top echelon of China's leadership on Saturday, including President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat who outranks Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

In remarks before reporters at the first meeting, neither Kerry nor Wang directly referred to North Korea, though the trip had "come at a critical moment", Wang said.

"Obviously there are enormously challenging issues in front of us and I look forward to having that conversation with you today to do exactly what you said - lift this conversation up, broaden it, set a roadmap, define for both of us what the model relationship (would) be and how two great powers, China and the United States, can work effectively to solve problems," Kerry told Wang.

Kerry's visit to Asia, which will include a stop in Tokyo on Sunday, takes place after weeks of shrill North Korean threats of war since the imposition of new U.N. sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February.

North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it said on Friday were its "treasured" guarantor of security.

"HUGE MISTAKE"

Beijing has been reluctant to apply pressure on Pyongyang, fearing the instability that could result if the North were to implode and send floods of refugees into China.

However, U.S. officials believe China's rhetoric on North Korea has begun to shift, pointing to a recent speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping in which - without referring explicitly to Pyongyang - he said no country "should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain."

Kerry, who arrived in  early on Saturday, told reporters in Seoul that if North Korea's 30-year-old leader went ahead with the launch of a medium-range missile, he would be making "a huge mistake."

Kerry's visit coincided with preparations for Monday's anniversary of North Korean state founder Kim Il-Sung's birth, a possible pretext for a show of strength, with speculation focusing on a possible new intermediate missile test launch.

At a news conference in Seoul on Friday and in a U.S.-South Korean joint statement issued on Saturday, Kerry signaled the U.S. preference for diplomacy to end the tensions, but stressed North Korea must take "meaningful" steps on denuclearization.

"We will continue to encourage North Korea to make the right choice. If North Korea does so, we are prepared to implement the commitments under the 2005 Six-Party Joint Statement," it added, referring to the aid-for-denuclearization agreement.

The United States and its allies believe the North violated the 2005 deal by conducting a nuclear test in 2006 and pursuing a uranium enrichment program that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based program.