In what the New York Times calls a rebuke to Donald Trump, North Korea declared Sunday that it will launch an intercontinental ballistic missile at any time from "anywhere determined by supreme headquarters." The statement from a Foreign Ministry spokesman to Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency follows Trump's assertion last week that the ICBM test "won't happen." There has been no response to Pyongyang's statement from Trump, though Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Meet the Press that the US considers North Korean missile development "a serious threat," and the US military is ready to shoot down anything launched by North Korea if it is "coming towards our territory or the territory of our friends and allies," the AP reports.
Experts believe that Pyongyang's claim to be close to testing a missile capable of reaching the US is "feasible," though the country is probably years away from perfecting the weapon, Reuters reports. The US, which said last week that pressure and sanctions against the North will continue, "is wholly to blame for pushing the DPRK to have developed ICBM" because of its "anachronistic policy hostile toward the DPRK for decades," KCNA quoted the Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. In what the AP describes as a suggestion Pyongyang is hoping for a change in policy under Trump, the spokesman also said: "Anyone who wants to deal with the DPRK would be well advised to secure a new way of thinking after having a clear understanding of it." (More North Korea stories.)
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