US official: North Korea conducted rocket engine test

WASHINGTON — North Korea has tested a rocket engine that could potentially be fitted to an intercontinental ballistic missile, a US official told AFP on Thursday, amid soaring tensions over Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear weapons program.

“A rocket engine was tested today,” the US official said on condition of anonymity, without providing any details.

News of the test came one day after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged China, Pyongyang’s sole ally, to put more pressure on the North to rein in its atomic weapons and ballistic missile programs.

Calling North Korea the “top security threat” to the United States, Tillerson said China has a “diplomatic responsibility to exert much greater economic and diplomatic pressure on the regime if they want to prevent further escalation in the region.”

US President Donald Trump has made halting the North Korean nuclear threat his number one foreign policy priority.

“We watch North Korea’s actions closely. But we will not comment on intelligence,” Navy commander Gary Ross said in an emailed statement, declining to confirm the rocket engine test.

“We call on the DPRK to refrain from provocative, destabilizing actions and rhetoric, and to make the strategic choice to fulfill its international obligations and commitments and return to serious talks.”

Earlier on Thursday, North Korea called Trump a “psychopath” as tensions escalated following the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who was evacuated in a coma from North Korean detention last week. Warmbier died a few days later and was buried Thursday in Ohio.

Trump this week slammed the “brutal regime” in Pyongyang, and said he was determined to “prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency.”

The UN Security Council earlier this month unanimously adopted a US-drafted resolution imposing new targeted sanctions on a handful of North Korean officials and entities, in response to a series of ballistic missile tests this year that are banned under UN resolutions.

However, North Korea slammed the latest UN sanctions as “mean” and vowed to press ahead with its missile and nuclear weapons programs.

Early last month, the North test-fired what appeared to be its longest-range ballistic missile to date, in a bid to bring the US mainland within reach.

The North has carried out two atomic tests and dozens of missile launches since the beginning of last year in its quest to develop a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States — something Trump has vowed “won’t happen.”

The US military “successfully intercepted an intercontinental ballistic missile target” in a test conducted amid concerns over the North’s weapons program, it said.