The United States is prepared to intercept any North Korean long-range missile as Pyongyang further tested international patience with fresh launches, a top US military commander said Thursday.
"The nation has a very, very credible ballistic-missile defense capability," General Victor "Gene" Renuart, the top US commander in North America, told The Washington Times.
"Our ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, I'm very comfortable, give me a capability that if we really are threatened by a long-range ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) that I've got high confidence that I could interdict that flight before it caused huge damage to any US territory."
His comments came as South Korean military officials said Pyongyang test-fired four short-range missiles Thursday, further fueling tension sparked by its nuclear standoff with the international community.
It was the first military action by the hardline communist state since the United Nations on June 12 imposed tougher sanctions for its May 25 nuclear test.
Like Renuart, President Barack Obama had assured in late June that the United States is "fully prepared" for a potential North Korean missile launch toward US territory.
Washington has said it was not excluding the possibility of a North Korean missile launch toward Hawaii on or around July 4, the US Independence Day, but the Pentagon has since expressed doubts about the scenario.
But Renuart, commander of US NORTHCOM and the missile launch-monitoring US-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), warned that "we ought to assume there might be one on the first of July and continue to be prepared and ready.
"I think we are certainly ready and capable of responding," Renuart said.
Thursday's North Korean missile launches came as a US delegation met Chinese officials in Beijing for talks on giving more teeth to UN sanctions imposed in June after the Stalinist state carried out an underground nuclear test on May 25, its second nuclear test since 2006.
