17 September, 2017
Haley made the remarks at the White House press briefing, in which she and national security adviser H.R. McMaster briefed the press on the administration's schedule and hopes for next week's General Assembly.
She said, however, that options for dealing with the regime of Kim Jong Un are not limited to diplomacy.
The Security Council scheduled an emergency closed-door meeting Friday afternoon in NY.
McMaster said new sanctions on North Korea are just going into effect and need to be given a chance to work.
Having said that, I have no problem kicking it to Gen. Mattis because I think he has plenty of options. "As Ambassador Haley said before, we've been kicking the can down the road and we're out of road".
South Korea launched a ballistic missile drill in response to the latest provocation by Pyongyang.
"What's different about this approach is we're out of time", McMaster said about USA efforts to get Kim to abandon his nuclear weapons program and missile tests. A trio of missile launches and a hydrogen bomb test that is the communist nation's most powerful to date.
Haley said the US agenda at the UN General Assembly is full, emphasizing efforts to "reform" the global body by cutting spending, including on ineffective peacekeeping programs.
But he said that while the United States did have a "military option", it was not the preferred route, adding that the USA is keen to work with allies on measures "short of war".
The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, put the onus on Beijing and Moscow to implement the agreed sanctions to the limit.
North Korea will be a focus of next week's worldwide summit at the United Nations general assembly, but China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin will not be attending.
The last set of sanctions included restrictions on North Korea's oil imports and a ban on its textile exports. "This includes the regime of North Korea, which has once again shown its utter contempt for its neighbours and for the entire world community", he said. But the North has ignored countless global reproaches previously.
"In the words of North Korea, we have strangled their economic situation at this point. There is no more road left", she said earlier this month.
