How serious is North Korea’s threat to United States?
SECRETARY CLINTON: It’s not a serious threat to the United States. At this time, its weapons capacity and technological progress is not a threat to us. But it is a threat to other of our allies if it continues, and it is a threat to further destabilization in East Asia, and particularly Northeast Asia. We’ll be talking about many important issues here at the ASEAN meeting. I’m very proud that we will – I will be signing, on behalf of my country, the Treaty of Amnesty and Cooperation. Of course, the work of ASEAN is just beginning to explore other areas. There was the first ever joint exercise in the Philippines to try to do better on disaster assistance. So we have a full agenda. But of course, the behavior and provocative actions of the North Koreans raise issues, because, for example, if North Korea pursues this nuclear program, other countries are going to feel, out of their own self-defense, a necessity that they must also. That produces a chain reaction. It’s one of the reasons wh
