Trump, Turnbull in furious agreement over North Korea

SBS World News Radio: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and United States President Donald Trump have spent half an hour on the phone, with much of discussion focused on the threat posed by North Korea.

Trump, Turnbull in furious agreement over North Korea

Trump, Turnbull in furious agreement over North Korea

It's a phone call that's been labelled very warm and very constructive, with the two agreeing on the regional threat that North Korea is posing by continuing its missile and nuclear tests.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says they are absolutely of one mind in condemning North Korea's reckless conduct.

Mr Turnbull says he's spoken to a number of other world leaders about North Korea, including Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and Indonesia's President, Joko Widodo.

He says it's clear everybody wants this dangerous situation resolved.

"Bring this reckless, dangerous, provocative regime to its senses without conflict. A conflict would be catastrophic- everyone understands that. But the best avenue to achieve that, that we can see, is continued enforcement of strong economic sanctions."

He says President Donald Trump agrees the country with the greatest influence over North Korea is China.

"China does have the greatest leverage by far and we will both continue to encourage China to bring more economic pressure to bear on North Korea to bring this regime to its senses."

The two leaders also acknowledge the North Korean leadership of Kim Jong-un represents a grave threat to regional stability.

Mr Turnbull says it's time for the international community to exert maximum diplomatic and economic pressure.

"We discussed the importance of the full enforcement of the current sanctions regime and the importance of additional sanctions, which of course are under consideration at the moment, being imposed in the future."

 

 






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Published 6 September 2017 8:00pm

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