TIL Desk/World/Lima-President Barack Obama will use his final meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping Saturday to press for an increase in the pace and severity of sanctions against North Korea. With Pyongyang launching test after provocative test to develop a miniaturized nuclear warhead and a missile capable of delivering that deadly payload to the United States, Obama’s White House wants to ratchet up the pressure before he leaves office in January.
Contributing to the tensions as the United States undergoes a transfer of power to President-elect Donald Trump, is the possibility that North Korea will see it as a prime opportunity to test an inexperienced new US commander in chief. In an interview ahead of Obama’s last foreign trip, his National Security Advisor Susan Rice told that the United States would work with allies and at the UN to “put increased and maximum pressure on North Korea.”
“We don’t view their progressive development of their capabilities as being anything other than a significant threat to our interests and that of our allies.” This pressure, she said, “has been building and will continue to build, certainly through the duration of this administration.” A second US official said the issue would be high on the agenda when Obama and Xi meet on the margins of an Asia-Pacific summit in Lima, Peru.
