Mike Pence visits aircraft carrier as questions emerge over Donald Trump's 'armada'

WASHINGTON: Vice President Mike Pence issued a fresh warning to North Korea from the deck of a US aircraft carrier in Japan, hours after reports emerged that the approaching “armada” that President Donald Trump touted last week was still thousands of miles away.

Pence — speaking to sailors and Marines gathered Wednesday on the USS Ronald Reagan at Yokosuka naval base — repeated the Trump administration’s line that all options to end North Korea’s nuclear programme were on the table.

More than a week earlier, on April 8, the US Navy announced that a strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson had been diverted north from Singapore to the Western Pacific as speculation mounted that North Korea was preparing a nuclear or missile test. Days later, in response to a question about the warships, Trump told the Fox Business Network that the US was “sending an armada, very powerful” to North Korea.

Instead, the fleet sailed south into the Indian Ocean for exercises with the Royal Australian Navy, at a time when Kim was parading his military might and tested another missile. The strike group was now heading to the Western Pacific “as a prudent measure” following a “curtailed” period of training with Australia, US Pacific Command spokesman Commander Dave Benham said on Wednesday.

Reports of the Carl Vinson’s deployment drew condemnation from North Korea, which slammed the move as “reckless”. The country’s United Nations envoy, Kim In Ryong, said this week that the US had pushed the Korean Peninsula to the “brink of war”.

“It does very seriously damage the credibility of the pressure the Americans are trying to apply to North Korea,” said Hugh White, who was deputy secretary for strategy and intelligence in the Australian Department of Defense from 1995 to 2000.