North Korea may be only months away from being able to strike the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile and its atomic weapons programme must be shut down, a senior U.S. disarmament official warned on Tuesday.

U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood, addressing the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, also warned that arsenals in China and Russia were expanding.

“Russia, China and North Korea are growing their stockpiles, increasing the prominence of nuclear weapons in their security strategies, and in some cases, pursuing the development of new nuclear capabilities to threaten other peaceful nations,” he said.

North Korea “may now be only months away from the capability to strike the U.S. with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles”.

(Reuters/NAN)