U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he is imposing new sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear threat as he prepared for meetings with the leaders of South Korea and Japan to plot strategy on their confrontation with Pyongyang.
Trump is meeting separately with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and together with both of them at a working lunch in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss their so-far futile attempts to rein in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un from carrying out repeated nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests.
Trump said he would impose the new sanctions, but it was not immediately clear how they would differ from the latest round of penalties imposed by the United Nations Security Council targeting North Korean exports and energy supplies.
Trump is sending the top U.S. diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to a Security Council session Thursday to press for enforcement of the sanctions against Pyongyang aimed at limiting its funds for weapons development.
The U.N. has adopted a series of sanctions against North Korea, but so far they have not kept Kim from continuing the weapons tests, including missile launches through the skies over Japan.
Kim Jong Un dubbed 'Rocket Man'
Trump, in a speech Tuesday to world leaders at the U.N., mocked Kim as "rocket man," and said the U.S. would "totally destroy North Korea" if it attacks the United States or its allies.
WATCH: Trump warns North Korean leader
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho dismissed Trump's threats, telling reporters in New York late Wednesday that they amounted to "the sound of a dog barking."
New strategy
U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster told CNN that North Korea's weapons tests are "destabilizing to the world and all nations."
He said the U.S. wants to resolve the confrontation over North Korea's nuclear weapons program diplomatically, but that "we have to make sure we're ready for any eventuality."
McMaster said Trump "is not going to repeat the failed strategies of the past" with negotiations that lock in North Korean weapons advances, only to have new conflicts with Pyongyang.
"We're out of time now on North Korea," McMaster said. "We can't take that approach anymore."
Still, he said Trump would "marshal the broad community of nations, nations that recognize we must work together, urgently, on this problem... to enforce those sanctions and do more...to resolve this problem with North Korea short of war."
Trump is also meeting Thursday with leaders at the center of other regional conflicts, President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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