North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has warned the United States that the nuclear button is always on his desk.
“The entire mainland of the US is within the range of our nuclear weapons and the nuclear button is always on the desk of my office. They should accurately be aware that this is not a threat but a reality,” said Kim during his annual New Year’s Day address, according to a CNN translation of the speec.
He also declared that his country is “a responsible nuclear nation that loves peace” and said that as long as there'’s no aggression directed at it, “we do not intend to use nuclear powers.”
Despite the more conciliatory tone of the speech, Kim called on his country to accelerate production of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
“As for the areas of nuclear weapons research and rocket engineering, we need to accelerate the mass production of nuclear warheads, whose power and reliability have already been secured, and ballistic missiles," Kim said, adding that the country also needed to be ready “to retaliate against the enemy’s move for a nuclear war.”
Euan Graham, the director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, told CNN that Kim's comment about the nuclear button “is effectively just noise.”
“It doesn't say anything we haven't heard before -- it's just his [Kim's] way of assuring everybody that he is the one in charge and in control. It’s almost like a declaration of victory, they're over the finish line as far they're concerned, they're trying to message the US that they've got what it takes to deter them -- they have a functioning ICBM, which may not be technically accurate, but nonetheless, that's the way he's [Kim's] trying to spin it at this stage," Graham said.
Source: CNN