UN chief wants resolutions on North Korea fully implemented

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes needed to be fully implemented by Pyongyang and other countries.

"It is very clear that the Security Council resolutions must be fully implemented first of all by North Korea but by all other countries whose role is crucial to ... achieve the result we all aim at, which is the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula," Guterres said.

Guterres made the comments to reporters after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo.

The meeting came just days after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions.

How will Pyongyang respond?

The White House has declined to say whether President Donald Trump, who has taken a tougher rhetorical line toward Pyongyang than Tillerson, gave approval for the top US diplomat's overture.

However a US official told Reuters on Wednesday that no negotiations could be held with North Korea until it improves its behaviour.

Japan has insisted that now is the time to keep up maximum pressure on Pyongyang, not start talks on the North's missile and nuclear programmes.

Tillerson's overture came nearly two weeks after North Korea said it had successfully tested a breakthrough intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire United States mainland within range. 

In September, North Korea fired a ballistic missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the second to fly over Japan in less than a month.

North Korea appears to have little interest in negotiations with the United States until it has developed the ability to hit the US mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile, something most experts say it has still not proved.

United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman, who visited Pyongyang last week, said on Tuesday senior North Korean officials did not offer any type of commitment to talks, but he believes he left "the door ajar."