SEOUL: The United States will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Wednesday, saying its atomic and missile programmes pose a "lethal and destabilising" threat. "There should be no mistaking that we do not today, nor will we ever, accept a North Korea with nuclear weapons," Gates told US and South Korean soldiers as he began a visit to Seoul. "The peril posed by the North Korean regime remains, and in many ways has become even more lethal and destabilising," he said in a speech.Gates said Washington would work with international partners to ensure the North abandons its nuclear weapons programme, and would bolster its regional allies against the threat from Pyongyang.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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