WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that military action is "not a first choice" in the range of options the United States is considering against North Korea.

The comments come days after Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters outside the White House Sunday that any threat to the U.S., its territories, or allies "will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming."

"We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so," Mattis finished, taking no questions.

The White House has been clear that all options remain on the table in dealing with North Korea after the country claimed to detonate its largest ever nuclear test explosion on Sunday.

In a separate gaggle Wednesday on Air Force One, the president said he had a "very good conversation" with Chinese President Xi Jinping that morning, and that the two leaders will talk again soon. Trump's North Korea strategy has hinged heavily on convincing China to help dissuade North Korea from continuing its nuclear program and its provocations.

Leaving St. John's Church in downtown Washington, D.C., over the weekend, President Trump told reporters "we'll see" when asked if he would attack North Korea after Pyongyang's latest launch and he repeated that on Wednesday. Trump previously promised to visit "fire and fury" upon North Korea in the past if it continues to act provocatively or if it strikes any of America's allies. He later wondered if that vow wasn't "tough enough."

But in recent days the president has tweeted several other approaches to the North Korea issue, like "stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea" and "allowing Japan & South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States."

Asked Tuesday if the president realizes that sanctions might not be the most effective avenue against North Korea, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters "now is not the time for us to spend a lot of time focused on talking with North Korea, but putting all measures of pressure that we can. And we're going to continue through that process."</s>WASHINGTON — In a flurry of phone calls with world leaders, President Donald Trump took a tough line against negotiating with North Korea as the communist country’s latest nuclear test exposed stark differences among international leaders for containing the threat. Trump’s military, diplomacy and intelligence chiefs were to brief Congress later Wednesday.

Trump stressed “now is not the time to talk to North Korea” and that “all options remain open to defend the United States and its allies,” according to a White House description of his telephone call with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday.

The readout was released shortly before Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose opinion is critical for getting the U.N. to apply tighter sanctions on North Korea, including possibly restricting China’s oil sales to its unpredictable neighbor.

Xi told Trump that China is firmly committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula but maintains the solution must be found through dialogue and peaceful means, according to a statement posted on state broadcaster China Central Television’s website Wednesday.

Trump also discussed North Korea’s purported hydrogen bomb test with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The weekend explosion was Pyongyang’s strongest-ever nuclear test and follows launches in July of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. mainland. Trump and Turnbull “confirmed that their two countries will intensify joint efforts to denuclearize North Korea.”

While Trump consulted his international counterparts, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats planned to hold closed-door briefings for House and Senate members on the North Korean threat.

As the Trump administration looked for partners to increase the North’s economic and diplomatic pressure, Russian President Vladimir Putin was pushing in the opposite direction. He warned against cornering Pyongyang. That sentiment is likely to be shared by Beijing, which fears a North Korean collapse on its border.

Putin said the nuclear test “flagrantly violates” international law. But he called for talks with North Korea, saying sanctions are not a solution.

Speaking after a meeting Wednesday with the president of close U.S. ally, South Korea, Putin urged support for a Russian-Chinese roadmap that seeks a North Korean nuclear freeze in exchange for the U.S. and South Korea curbing military drills. Washington rejects the proposal; Putin insisted it “offers a genuine way to defuse the tensions and a step-by-step settlement.”

“We should not give in to emotions and push Pyongyang into a corner,” Putin said. “As never before everyone should show restraint and refrain from steps leading to escalation and tensions.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in urged Russia to back stronger sanctions on the North, including an oil cutoff, but Putin worried that such moves would hurt North Korea’s people, said Yoon Young-chan, Moon’s chief press secretary. Moon also called for a ban on overseas North Korean workers — many of them in China and Russia — who provide foreign currency to the North.

Moon, a liberal who took office in May, initially advocated a diplomatic approach on North Korea. His government has taken a harder stance as the North continued its torrid pace of weapons tests. Speaking to Russian news agency TASS on Tuesday, Moon said he believes now is not the time for talks and that the international community must increase the pressure on North Korea.

Illustrating the country’s hardening sentiment, South Korea says the U.S. military will begin adding more launchers to a contentious high-tech U.S. missile defense system in South Korea on Thursday. Although focused on deterring North Korea, China and Russia see the system as harmful to their security interests.

In separate calls Tuesday with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Mattis reassured the allies of America’s “ironclad” commitment to their defense. He said any threat to the U.S. and its allies would be met “with a massive, effective and overwhelming military response.”</s>Donald Trump has announced his is selling Japan and South Korea a “substantially increased” amount of US military equipment, as the President and his allies look for ways to counter the threat from North Korea.

Amid mounting tension over North Korea aggressiveness, and the US’s bellicose rhetoric and sabre-rattling, Mr Trump said he was ready to increase the amount of military hardware in the region - presumably as a bid to deter Pyongyang.

“I am allowing Japan and South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States,” Mr Trump said on Twitter.

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Mr Trump’s comment came after the US and its allies scrambled to decide how to respond to recent actions from North Korea.

The East Asian nation has tested up to six missiles in recent months and over the weekend it apparently detonated a thermonuclear device, many more times powerful than the bomb the US dropped on Japan seven decades ago. It has fired missiles over the Japanese mainland, and threatened to fire such devices close to the US territory of Guam.

As Mr Trump made his announcement, a senior North Korean diplomat said his country was ready to send “more gift packages” to the US.

Han Tae Song, ambassador of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the UN in Geneva, was addressing the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament two days after his country detonated its sixth nuclear test explosion.

“I am proud of saying that just two days ago on the 3rd of September, DPRK successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test for intercontinental ballistic rocket under its plan for building a strategic nuclear force,” he said, according to Reuters.

He added: “The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a ‘gift package’ addressed to none other than the US.

“The US will receive more gift packages from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK”.

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US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said North Korea had defied the international community once again.

“We look forward to working with our partners in the (Security) Council with regard to a new resolution that will put some of the strongest sanctions possible on the DPRK,” he told the conference, according to the news agency.

“Advances in the regime's nuclear and missile programame are a threat to us all…now is the time to say tests, threats and destabilising actions will no longer be tolerated. It can no longer be business as usual with this regime.”

The White House said on Monday that Mr Trump had agreed “in principle” to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea’s missiles in the wake of the North’s latest test. The United States accused North Korea’s trading partners of aiding its nuclear ambitions and said Pyongyang was “begging for war”.</s>Beijing: China is focussed on solving the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue through talks and peaceful means, Chinese president Xi Jinping told US president Donald Trump in a telephone call on Wednesday.

The United States and South Korea have asked the United Nations to consider tough new sanctions on North Korea after its nuclear test on Sunday that Pyongyang said was an advanced hydrogen bomb.

Washington and its allies have said there is a growing urgency for China, North Korea’s top ally and trading partner, to apply more pressure on its already isolated neighbour to get it to back down on its nuclear weapons and missiles programmes.

China’s focus on negotiations contrasts with Trump’s assertions over the last few days that now was not the time to focus on talks with North Korea.

In a telephone call with UK prime minister Theresa May on Tuesday, “President Trump reiterated that now is not the time to talk to North Korea, and made clear that all options remain open to defend the United States and its allies against North Korean aggression,” the White House said on Wednesday.

However, the issue was not mentioned in a separate White House statement on the Trump-Xi call, which said only that the two leaders recognised the danger posed by North Korea and committed to working together with the goal of denuclearising the Korean Peninsula.

Earlier, a statement from China’s foreign ministry said China “unswervingly” works to realise denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula and to safeguard the international nuclear non-proliferation system, Xi told Trump.

“At the same time, we always persist in safeguarding peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and resolving the issue through dialogue and consultation,” Xi said.

“It is necessary to stay on the path of a peaceful solution.”

Xi also said that China attaches importance to Trump’s visit to China later this year.

The statement cited Trump as saying that the United States was deeply concerned about the Korean nuclear issue and that it valued China’s “important role” in resolving the problem.

US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley accused North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Monday of “begging for war” and urged the Security Council to impose the “strongest possible” sanctions.

Beijing has said reining in North Korea is not chiefly its responsibility, and has expressed doubts that UN economic sanctions, which it has backed, will resolve the situation.

Sanctions so far appear to have done little to stop North Korea from boosting its nuclear and missile capacity as it faces off with Trump, who has vowed to stop Pyongyang from being able to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear weapon.

It is unclear if China will back further sanctions. Beijing fears that completely cutting off North Korea could lead to its collapse, unleashing a wave of refugees into China’s northeast.

China accounted for 92 percent of North Korea’s trade in 2016, according to South Korea. China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it would take part in Security Council discussions in “a responsible and constructive manner”.

China and Russia have advocated a plan in which the United States and Seoul stop major military drills in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programmes, but neither side is willing to budge.

Trump and Xi last spoke by telephone on 12 August. The White House said at the time that their relationship was “extremely close” and “will hopefully lead to a peaceful resolution of the North Korea problem.”

But tensions in China-US ties have increased since Trump took office, with the US president having authorized an investigation into China’s alleged theft of intellectual property, and suggesting trade relations would be linked to Beijing’s help on North Korea.</s>Tensions on the peninsula remain high after North Korea conducted a huge nuclear test Sunday.

South Korea's defense ministry said Monday that Kim Jong Un's regime might be preparing to launch another missile, perhaps an intercontinental ballistic missile theoretically capable of reaching the mainland United States.

North Korea's increasingly hostile threats, matched by the rapidly advancing ability to make good on them, have policymakers in the United States and in South Korea wondering how to respond.

President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, spoke on the phone for 40 minutes Monday night, Korean time - some 34 hours after the nuclear test and more than 24 hours after Trump took to Twitter to criticize Moon's "talk of appeasement."

The two agreed to remove the limit on allowed payloads for South Korean missiles -- something Seoul had been pushing for - as a way to increase deterrence against North Korea, according to a read-out of the phone call from South Korea's Blue House.

They also agreed to work together to punish North Korea for Sunday's nuclear test, including by pushing for tougher sanctions through the United Nations.

Only the "strongest" economic sanctions would be acceptable, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told the United Nations Security Council Monday, but she did not spell out U.S. proposals or how she would overcome the objections of veto-wielding permanent members China and Russia.

Haley did, however, rule out the "freeze for freeze" proposal backed by China and Russia, which would suspend U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea in return for suspension of North Korean nuclear and missile tests.

Earlier Monday, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that he asked his American counterpart, Jim Mattis, during talks at the Pentagon last week for strategic assets like U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers to be sent to South Korea more regularly.

"I told him that it would be good for strategic assets to be sent regularly to the Korean Peninsula and that some South Korean lawmakers and media are strongly pushing for tactical nuclear weapons (to be redeployed)," Song told a parliamentary hearing on North Korea's nuclear test, without disclosing Mattis' response.

A poll that YTN, a cable news channel, commissioned in August found that 68 percent of respondents said they supported bringing tactical nuclear weapons back to South Korea.

On Monday, the day after North Korean conducted a nuclear test easily powerful enough to devastate a large city, Song appeared to throw his support behind the idea.

"The redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons is an alternative worth a full review," Song said, echoing a position closely associated with conservatives in South Korea, not progressives like Moon Jae-in, who was elected president in May after vowing to engage with North Korea.

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party, which is staunchly conservative, last month added bringing American nuclear weapons back to its party platform.

The United States had about 100 weapons, including short-range artillery with nuclear warheads and gravity bombs, stationed in South Korea until 1991. President George H.W. Bush signed the Presidential Nuclear Initiative and withdrew all naval and land-based tactical nuclear weapons that had been deployed abroad.

Shortly after, the two Koreas signed an agreement committing to making the peninsula nuclear weapons-free - a deal that North Korea violated by developing nuclear weapons. But Pyongyang has maintained that Seoul has also broken its promise because remaining under the U.S. nuclear umbrella is tantamount, it says, to having nuclear weapons.

After the defense minister spoke at the hearing, the South Korean president's office said that it was not considering redeploying tactical nuclear weapons. "Our government's firm stance on the nuclear-free peninsula remains unchanged," said Kim Dong-jo, a spokesman for Moon.

Military experts in the United States are almost universally opposed to the idea of deploying strategic or tactical weapons in South Korea.

"The thing that most concerns me about redeployment is that it introduces more room for miscalculation or unintended escalation," said Catherine Dill of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.

In that situation, the ability to react more quickly could be a negative factor.

From the perspective of the military alliance between the United States and South Korea, having long-range ballistic missiles or strategic bombers are "perfectly sufficient" to continue to deter North Korea, Dill said.

As alliance partners, the United States and South Korean militaries work in close cooperation in South Korea, regularly conducting drills together. This includes sending "strategic assets" like bombers stationed on the Pacific Island of Guam and aircraft carriers to South Korea on a regular basis.

As the North Korean threat has increased this year, the United States has sent F-35 stealth aircraft and other strike fighters on flyovers across the southern half of the peninsula in a not-so-thinly veiled warning to Kim. U.S. Pacific Command even released photos last week of B-1B Lancers dropping bombs on a range on the southern side of the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.

But a growing number of policymakers in Seoul say that Guam is too far away and that, if it comes under attack from North Korea, South Korea can't wait the two-plus hours it would take American bombers to arrive from their base in the Pacific.

"We need these strategic or tactical assets that can destroy North Korea's nuclear-capable missiles before they can inflict harm on us," said Chun Yung-woo, a nuclear expert and former South Korean national security adviser.

"Right now they can retaliate but by that time, tens of thousands of people might have been killed," Chun said. "We need a first layer of offensive weapons stationed closer to North Korea's nuclear and missile sites."

Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert who served on President Barack Obama's national security council, said that in the South Korean context, "strategic assets" were all about giving "a tangible sense of reassurance" to the government in Seoul.

"The reassurance bucket is bottomless," Wolfsthal said. "You can pour stuff into it and it's never going to fill up."

South Korean officials have been asking for fighter jets and ballistic missile-equipped submarines to be based on the peninsula, and have long simply wanted B-1Bs and B-52s to land rather than just fly over - all to give a sense of greater sense of commitment to South Korea.

But there are good logistical reasons why that can't happen, said Wolfsthal. For one, South Korea doesn't have airstrips long enough for big, heavy B-52s, and second, the U.S. does not want its high-tech fighter jets sitting within North Korean artillery range.

South Korea has been also flexing its military muscles by itself in response to North Korea's provocations, practicing strikes on the North Korean nuclear test site at Punggye-ri at dawn Monday.

The South Korean military calculated the distance to the site and practiced having F-15 jet fighters accurately hit the target, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The South Korean air force would stage a live-fire drill, launching Taurus air-to-surface guided missiles from F-15K fighter jets, later this month, the defense ministry said Monday. The missiles have a range of 300 miles - enough to carry out precision strikes on North Korea's key nuclear and missile sites.

The ministry also said it had seen signs of preparation for another ballistic missile launch and South Korea's national intelligence service told lawmakers that it could be another intercontinental ballistic missile.

"There is a possibility that the North could make additional provocations by firing an ICBM toward the northern Pacific," Kim Byung-kee, a ruling party lawmaker, after being briefed by agency staff, according to the Yonhap News Agency.</s>WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump would discuss with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping the security challenge posed by North Korea following Pyongyang's biggest nuclear weapons test, the White House said.

On Sunday, North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb designed for a long-range missile and called its sixth and most powerful nuclear test a "perfect success", sparking world condemnation and promises of tougher US sanctions.

Trump's call to Xi is part of his efforts to reach out to global leaders on the issue of North Korean threat.

This would be the first phone call between the two leaders after North Korea carried out another nuclear test a few days ago and has threatened to equip its ballistic missile with nuclear weapons.

"In the morning, President Donald Trump will speak with President Xi Jinping of China," the White House said.

Over the past few days, he has spoken multiple times with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

He also spoke over phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South Korea President Moon Jae-In.

Meanwhile, South Korean Second Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun told a Washington audience that North Korea is rapidly becoming a threat too hard to bear.

"First, we should not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. The second thing we can not accept, in any case, is a war on the Korean peninsula," Cho said at a luncheon organised at a think-tank.

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Congressman Stephanie Murphy, said North Korea's nuclear test are a profoundly dangerous, defiant, and destabilising event.

"As expected, the test has generated verbal condemnation from the international community, including China and Russia.

But it is too early to say whether these strong words will be followed by strong actions and, if so, what those actions will entail and whether they will make any difference in altering North Korea's strategic calculus," he said. LKJ UZM</s>According to officials, South Korea has detected that North Korea is continuing on its unrelenting resolve at ensuring a nuclear power house by preparing for a possible Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launch – a move which will certainly hit the polity harder following Kim Jong-un’s sixth conducted and most powerful nuclear detonation yesterday, Bloomberg reports.

Acting chief of the defense ministry’s policy planning office, Chang Kyung-soo told lawmakers this morning that North Korea was making preparations for a missile launch, but unsure of a timeframe for the potential launch.

Earlier in the day, South Korea in its responsive warnings to the North’s defiance to peace talks earlier paved the way for the full deployment of a U.S. missile defense system while its military also conducted a live-fire drill with North Korea’s test site as the virtual target.

The Yonhap news agency reported that, the Seoul’s move would remove the final administrative hurdle for complete installment of the missile shield, known as Thaad, which China sees as a threat to the region’s “strategic equilibrium.” The report added that South Korea and the U.S. were discussing deployment of a U.S. carrier group and strategic bombers.

Following the nuclear test, U.S. President Donald Trump had in a series of tweets on Sunday slammed decried South Korea’s proposition of peace talks and threatened to increase economic sanctions and halt trade with any nation which continues to ply trade with North Korea – a list which would include China, a U.S.’s biggest trading partner,</s>China is focused on solving the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue through talks and peaceful means, Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Donald Trump in a telephone call on Wednesday, according to China's official Xinhua news agency.

BEIJING: China is focussed on solving the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue through talks and peaceful means, Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Donald Trump in a telephone call on Wednesday.

The United States and South Korea have asked the United Nations to consider tough new sanctions on North Korea after its nuclear test on Sunday that Pyongyang said was an advanced hydrogen bomb.

Washington and its allies have said there is a growing urgency for China, North Korea's top ally and trading partner, to apply more pressure on its already isolated neighbour to get it to back down on its nuclear weapons and missiles programmes.

China’s focus on negotiations contrasts with Trump’s assertions over the last few days that now was not the time to focus on talks with North Korea.

In a telephone call with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday, “President Trump reiterated that now is not the time to talk to North Korea, and made clear that all options remain open to defend the United States and its allies against North Korean aggression,” the White House said on Wednesday.

However, the issue was not mentioned in a separate White House statement on the Trump-Xi call, which said only that the two leaders recognised the danger posed by North Korea and committed to working together with the goal of denuclearising the Korean Peninsula.

Earlier, a statement from China's foreign ministry said China "unswervingly" works to realise denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula and to safeguard the international nuclear non-proliferation system, Xi told Trump.

"At the same time, we always persist in safeguarding peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and resolving the issue through dialogue and consultation," Xi said.

"It is necessary to stay on the path of a peaceful solution."

Xi also said that China attaches importance to Trump's visit to China later this year.

The statement cited Trump as saying that the United States was deeply concerned about the Korean nuclear issue and that it valued China's "important role" in resolving the problem.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley accused North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday of "begging for war" and urged the Security Council to impose the "strongest possible" sanctions.

Beijing has said reining in North Korea is not chiefly its responsibility, and has expressed doubts that U.N. economic sanctions, which it has backed, will resolve the situation.

Sanctions so far appear to have done little to stop North Korea from boosting its nuclear and missile capacity as it faces off with Trump, who has vowed to stop Pyongyang from being able to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear weapon.

It is unclear if China will back further sanctions. Beijing fears that completely cutting off North Korea could lead to its collapse, unleashing a wave of refugees into China's northeast.

China accounted for 92 percent of North Korea's trade in 2016, according to South Korea. China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday it would take part in Security Council discussions in "a responsible and constructive manner".

China and Russia have advocated a plan in which the United States and Seoul stop major military drills in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programmes, but neither side is willing to budge.

Trump and Xi last spoke by telephone on Aug. 12. The White House said at the time that their relationship was "extremely close" and "will hopefully lead to a peaceful resolution of the North Korea problem."

But tensions in China-U.S. ties have increased since Trump took office, with the U.S. president having authorized an investigation into China's alleged theft of intellectual property, and suggesting trade relations would be linked to Beijing's help on North Korea.</s>Japan is reportedly planning for a possible mass evacuation of its citizens in South Korea as tensions with North Korea continue to rise amid threats of nuclear war.

"There is a possibility of further provocations," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday, according to Japanese magazine Nikkei Asian Review. "We need to remain extremely vigilant and do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people."

Plans of mass evacuation from the South come as North Korea continues to ramp up its threats of nuclear war, as well as reports that the regime appears to be preparing a ballistic missile launch to show off its claimed ability to target the U.S.

North Korea on Sunday said it had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb which possibly triggered a 6.3 magnitude artificial earthquake.

HALEY SAYS NORTH KOREA IS 'BEGGING FOR WAR,' CALLS FOR STRONGEST POSSIBLE UN SANCTIONS

Around 60,000 Japanese citizens currently reside in South Korea, the news outlet reported. About 38,000 are long-term residents, while roughly 19,000 are tourists or short-term visitors.

"If the U.S. decided on a military strike against the North, the Japanese government would start moving toward an evacuation on its own accord regardless of whether the American plans are public," a Japanese government source told the Nikkei Review.

Japan's proposed plan is comprised of four steps: seek to limit unessential travel to South Korea, discourage all travel to the South, advise Japanese citizens to evacuate and encourage them to shelter in place.

South Korea held a live-fire training exercise simulating an attack on a nuclear site after North Korea's hydrogen bomb test in an apparent show of force to the North.

The United Nations Security Council met Monday for an emergency meeting following the North's recent provocations. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley told the council that while "War is never something the United States wants … enough is enough."

"We don't want it now. But our country's patience is not unlimited," Haley said. "The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country, that is giving aid to their reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions."

President Donald Trump said Sunday in a series of tweets that North Korea's incitements "continue to be very hostile and dangerous" to the U.S., and said he’s considering cutting off trade with any country that does business with the communist regime.

The North's hydrogen bomb test was the country's sixth such test, following five previous ones on a nuclear warhead and recent launches of inter-continental missiles to land such weapons on foreign soil.</s>Donald Trump to reach out to global leaders on the North Korean threat issue.

US President Donald Trump would discuss with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping the security challenge posed by North Korea following Pyongyang's biggest nuclear weapons test, the White House said.

On Sunday, North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb designed for a long-range missile and called its sixth and most powerful nuclear test a "perfect success", sparking world condemnation and promises of tougher US sanctions.

Trump's call to Xi is part of his efforts to reach out to global leaders on the issue of North Korean threat.

This would be the first phone call between the two leaders after North Korea carried out another nuclear test a few days ago and has threatened to equip its ballistic missile with nuclear weapons.

"In the morning, President Donald Trump will speak with President Xi Jinping of China," the White House said.

Over the past few days, he has spoken multiple times with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

He also spoke over phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South Korea President Moon Jae-In.

Meanwhile, South Korean Second Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun told a Washington audience that North Korea is rapidly becoming a threat too hard to bear.

"First, we should not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. The second thing we can not accept, in any case, is a war on the Korean peninsula," Cho said at a luncheon organised at a think-tank.

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Congressman Stephanie Murphy, said North Korea's nuclear test are a profoundly dangerous, defiant, and destabilising event.

"As expected, the test has generated verbal condemnation from the international community, including China and Russia.

But it is too early to say whether these strong words will be followed by strong actions and, if so, what those actions will entail and whether they will make any difference in altering North Korea's strategic calculus," he said.
Amid tensions from South Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump announces that he is "allowing Japan and South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States."