UNITED States Vice-President Mike Pence yesterday called on Brazil, Mexico and other Latin American powers to break off economic and diplomatic ties with North Korea over Pyongyang’s missile threats.

“We strongly urge Chile today, and we urge Brazil and Mexico and Peru, to break all diplomatic and commercial ties to North Korea,” Pence told a press conference alongside Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

“We would especially welcome Chile reclassifying exports of Chilean wine… as a luxury good under current US sanctions to prevent North Korean from obtaining these commodities and converting them into hard currency that support the regime.”

Chile’s Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz later responded: “We respect the US’ request, but Chile will maintain its relations. They are distant relations because we have strictly applied all the sanctions decreed by the (United Nations) Security Council against North Korea.”

In 2015, North Korea imported US$65,000 (RM279,000) worth of Chilean wine, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a US-based trade monitor.

Mexico sold it US$45 million of oil and Peru exported US$22 million of copper to North Korea that year, the observatory says.

Bachelet called on parties “to renew all the diplomatic efforts and conversations… to the North, South Korea, China, the Russian Federation… in order to have a Korean peninsula without nuclear weapons.”

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Un, on Tuesday backed off from a threat to fire missiles towards the US territory of Guam.

Pence was visiting Chile on the third stop of a tour of Latin American countries to boost trade ties and rally them over the crisis in Venezuela.

He said he had decided “to end our trip a little bit early tomorrow after we stop in Panama” on the last leg of the trip.

Pence may be needed back home.

In Washington, US President Donald Trump was in the eye of a political storm yesterday after his remarks on unrest at rallies by white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville.

The White House said Trump and Pence would meet tomorrow with his national security team at Camp David, as he mulls whether to send more American troops to war-ravaged Afghanistan. – AFP, August 17, 2017.