U.S. President Donald Trump says he “would not be happy” if North Korea conducts another nuclear test, which would be its sixth.

“I can tell you also, I don’t believe that the president of China, who is a very respected man, will be happy either,” Trump said of Chinese President Xi Jinping in an interview that aired Sunday on the CBS television network’s “Face the Nation” show.

WATCH: President Trump on China and North Korea

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Asked if “not happy” with another Pyongyang nuclear test meant he would undertake “military action” against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump said, “I don’t know. I mean, we’ll see.”

North Korea, which is trying to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland 9,000 kilometers away, conducted a new missile test Saturday, but South Korea said it once again failed.

Trump, in a Twitter comment, said the test “disrespected the wishes of China & its highly respected President…. Bad!”  But in the CBS interview, Trump said North Korea eventually “will have a better delivery system.”

The U.S. leader described Kim Jong Un as “obviously … a pretty smart cookie,” but said the U.S. cannot allow North Korea to develop a nuclear weapon, and blamed prior American presidential administrations for not dealing with the Pyongyang’s military ambitions.

Saturday’s North Korean missile test came just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned the United Nations Security Council of “catastrophic consequences” if the international community, and especially China does not pressure North Korea into ending its nuclear weapons development program.

The United States and South Korea on Sunday completed their annual large-scale military drills, which involved 20,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 U.S. forces. But the two countries continued their joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan that Pyongyang has condemned as a provocation in preparation for an attack on North Korea.

The naval exercises included a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, Trump dispatched to the region as a warning to North Korea. Through state media, North Korea has threatened to attack the battleship.

Trump, a real estate mogul turned Republican politician, also assailed opposition Democratic lawmakers in Congress as he started the second hundred days in his four-year term in the White House.

“The Democrats have been totally obstructionist,” Trump told CBS, and said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer “has turned out to be a bad leader. He’s a bad leader for the country.”

On his Twitter account, Trump added, “They are only interested in themselves and not in what’s best for U.S.”

Asked what he had learned during his first 100 days as president, Trump renewed his frequent attacks on the  mainstream U.S. news media. “One of the things that I’ve learned is how dishonest the media is, really,” he said.

But he also complained about the pace of action in official Washington.

“It’s just a very, very bureaucratic system,” he said. “I think the rules in Congress and in particular the rules in the Senate are unbelievably archaic and slow-moving,” where most major pieces of legislation require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member chamber.

He attacked continuing investigations in Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Russian meddling in the presidential election aimed at boosting his chances of winning.

“The concept of Russia with respect to us is total phony story,” Trump said. “We have to find out what happened. I’d love to find out what  happened. I can tell you one thing. Had nothing to do with us,” referring to links between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials.  

During his first 100 days, Trump failed in his effort to repeal and replace the national health care reforms that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, considered to be his signature legislative achievement.

But Trump has been pressuring the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to vote on a revised measure to replace the law popularly known as Obamacare after Republican leaders withdrew repeal legislation in March when they did not have enough votes to pass it.

Trump tweeted, “You can’t compare anything to ObamaCare because ObamaCare is dead. Dems want billions to go to Insurance Companies to bail out donors….New healthcare plan is on its way. Will have much lower premiums & deductibles while at the same time taking care of pre-existing conditions!”

Republican leaders say they will only hold a vote on a revised measure to repeal the seven-year-old Obama-era law if they believe they have enough votes to pass the legislation, even as national polls show Obamacare gaining in popularity.

 
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A set of ancient Angkorian gold jewelry that found its way to a London art dealership will be returned to Cambodia after the government intervened to stop a planned sale.

The Jonathan Tucker Antonia Tozer Asian Art dealership listed the jewelry in its online catalog, according to a statement from Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.

The ministry petitioned the dealership in November to return the Angkorian artifacts. They originated in the Khmer empire, a power in Southeast Asia from A.D. 802 to A.D. 1431. At one point, it included much of today’s Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and southern Vietnam.

“Cambodia has provided concrete testimony to prove that the artifact jewelry belongs to Cambodia, is jewelry designed in the Khmer style and that only Cambodia has this style, and it was taken out of the country illegally,” the statement said.

Looting during the war

During decades of war, Cambodia lost countless priceless historical artifacts to looters and smugglers who targeted ancient sites. The Khmer Rouge and other military groups often controlled looters in their areas.

“There is a good argument that the illicit trade in artifacts, gemstones and timber even helped to prolong the conflict,” Terressa Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition and School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, told VOA Khmer in an email.

Many of the items they took ended up with foreign art traders, although it is not clear when the jewelry in question was taken from the kingdom or by whom.

Jonathan Tucker, joint owner of the dealership, did not immediately respond to an interview request.

Items to return to Cambodia

The set includes a crown, necklace, earrings, armbands, belt and chest ornament, and will be returned with the assistance of the British government, Thai Norak Satya, spokesman for the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, said. In recent years, Cambodia has successfully repatriated several ancient statues from the United States.

Looting artifacts has a history almost as old as some of the items themselves.

The earliest known trial of looters in Egypt took place in Thebes in 1113 B.C. Today, there are curbs on the trade.

In 1970, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which to date 132 countries have signed.

Antiquities in demand

Nonetheless, there is a multibillion-dollar demand for ancient artifacts such as the Angkorian jewelry — “too great a demand to be met by the legal supply,” Davis said.

“As a result, looting and trafficking is now an illegal industry that spans the globe, financing crime, conflict and even terrorism,” said Davis, a lawyer who in 2015 was knighted by the Royal Government of Cambodia for her work in recovering the country’s plundered heritage.

As is happening today in Iraq and Syria, “the Cambodian Civil War triggered organized looting, and trafficking, which helped to further bankroll the conflict,” she said.

Two years ago, UNESCO described the Islamic State’s looting in Syria and Iraq as “industrial” in scale.

Norak Satya said the recovery was “an act of encouragement” in the fight against the illicit trade in antiquities. Davis agreed, saying most Cambodian artworks are sacred objects that were never meant to be bought and sold.

“They are the rightful property — and legacy — of the Cambodian people,” she said. “Yet, like so many Cambodian families, the country’s ancient treasures were broken apart during the civil war and scattered to the ends of the Earth. As this story shows, they are continuing to surface and likely will for decades to come.”

Preserving heritage

Sambo Manara, a history professor at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, said the return of looted artifacts to Cambodia would help to preserve Khmer heritage.

“Our ancestors left us a heritage that the world started to pay attention to,” he said. “What we have obtained recently tells the world about the real value of Cambodia’s great men and ancient ancestors.”

Phoeung Sakona, Cambodia’s minister of Culture and Fine Arts, said the return of the artifacts would help to heal old wounds. She encouraged other dealerships to follow suit.

“It is a sign of Cambodia’s recovery that this heritage is now returning home, thanks to the hard work of the Ministry of Culture and Council of Ministers,” Davis said. “This is not just about art, it is about justice, and it gives hope to countries in conflict today, like Iraq and Syria.”

This report originated in the VOA Khmer Service.

 
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Famed Swiss climber Ueli Steck was killed Sunday in a mountaineering accident near Mount Everest in Nepal, expedition organizers said.

Mingma Sherpa of the Seven Summit Treks said Steck was killed at Camp 1 of Mount Nuptse. His body has been recovered from the site and been taken to Lukla, where the only airport in the Mount Everest area is located.

It was not clear how Steck died but he was planning to climb 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) Mount Everest and nearby Mount Lhotse next month.

He was the first casualty in the spring mountaineering season in Nepal that began in March and will end in May. Hundreds of foreign climbers are on the mountains to attempt scale Himalayan peaks in May when there are a few windows of favorable weather.

The 40-year-old Steck was one of the most-renowned mountaineers of his generation. He was best known for his speed-climbing, including setting several records for ascending the north face of the Eiger, a classic mountaineering peak in the Bernese Alps that he climbed in two hours and 47 minutes without using a rope.

In 2013 he achieved the first solo climb of the Annapurna south face in Nepal after almost losing his life in a fall there in 2007. For that he received the “Piolet d’Or” — considered the Oscar of mountaineering — the following year.

In 2015, Steck decided to climb all 82 peaks in the Alps higher than 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) traveling between mountains by foot, bike and paraglider only. He completed the feat in 62 days, helping cement his reputation as the “Swiss Machine.”

Steck said in an interview last month with Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger that he considers himself an “outsider” in the mountaineering scene because athletic achievement is more important to him than adventure.

Asked about his upcoming Everest-Lhotse expedition, involving a quick climb from one peak to the other including an overnight in the “death zone,” Steck said: “When I’m on Everest I can stop at any point. The risk is therefore quite small. For me it’s primarily a physical project. Either I get through, or I don’t have the strength for the whole traversal.”

Asked what he would consider to be success on his expedition, Steck told Tages-Anzeiger: “Of course I want to climb Everest and Lhotse. But that’s a very high goal. Failure for me would be to die and not come home.”

 
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The Philippines followed up a summit of Southeast Asian leaders by releasing a final communique Sunday that removed mention of international concerns over China’s “militarization” of newly built islands in the disputed South China Sea, a major concession to Beijing.

The 25-page statement issued by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte following the daylong meeting of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations he hosted in Manila also made no direct mention of his country’s landmark arbitration victory against China last year.

A vague reference to the ruling was removed from a part of the communique that discussed the long-seething territorial conflicts and moved elsewhere in the document.

Stronger statement gone

The changes were apparent based on a previous draft of the communique seen by The Associated Press. A foreign diplomat based in Manila told the AP that the Philippines circulated a stronger draft statement to other ASEAN member states, which was backed by countries like Vietnam. 

Other governments made suggestions, but Duterte, as ASEAN chairman this year, could decide how to shape the language of the regional bloc’s “chairman’s statement,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to discuss the issue publicly. 

China and ASEAN member states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, along with Taiwan, have overlapping claims to territory in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which billions of dollars in world trade passes each year. The waters are also important fishing grounds and are believed to have undersea deposits of oil and gas. 

Decisions by consensus

ASEAN, which makes decisions by consensus, has previously struggled to come up with statements on the issue, with Duterte’s predecessor often pushing for a tougher tone against China and getting pushback from members, like Beijing’s allies Cambodia and Laos, unwilling to upset their largest trading partner and most important economic benefactor. 

China has dismissed and ignored last July’s arbitration ruling, which invalidated most of its historic claims to almost all of the South China Sea. China has long argued that the territorial disputes have nothing to do with its relationship with ASEAN and should be settled through bilateral talks. 

Chinese Embassy officials in Manila were not immediately available for comment.

Weaker future

Former Philippine officials who dealt with the disputes say Duterte’s concessions to China could weaken the ability of the Philippines and other ASEAN member states to seek Chinese compliance to the arbitration ruling and curb Beijing’s increasingly assertive behavior in the disputed waters. 

Duterte has said he prefers to warm once-frosty ties with China and secure infrastructure funding from Beijing. Still he has said he will raise the ruling with China at some point during his six-year term. 

“Non-mention of The Hague ruling would be a diplomatic triumph for China,” said former Philippine national security adviser Roilo Golez, referring to the European tribunal that issued the landmark decision. 

“It might embolden them to advance some more in their South China Sea master plan,” said Golez, citing fears that China may also turn the disputed Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines into another island outpost.
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Growth in China’s manufacturing sector slowed in April, official data showed Sunday, pointing to an unsteady recovery in the world’s second-largest economy. 

The monthly purchasing managers’ index by the Chinese Federation of Logistics and Purchasing fell to 51.2 in April, lower than the 51.8 recorded in March. 

The index is based on a 100-point scale on which numbers above 50 indicate expansion.

National Bureau of Statistics statistician Zhao Qinghe said in the release that April’s figure was affected by sluggish growth in market demand and supply, and slower expansion in imports and exports.

April’s index still represented a ninth consecutive month of expansion. 

China saw its slowest growth in nearly three decades in 2016. China’s huge manufacturing sector is seen as an important indicator for the wider Chinese economy. It has cooled gradually over the past six years as Beijing tries to pivot it away from heavy reliance on export-based manufacturing and investment toward consumer spending.

The official full-year economic growth target for 2017 is 6.5 percent. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump has invited Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to Washington to discuss various issues, including the threat North Korea presents to regional security.

After the two spoke by phone Saturday, a White House statement said, “It was a very friendly conversation, in which the two leaders discussed the concerns of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regarding regional security, including the threat posed by North Korea.”

North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile early Saturday north of the capital, Pyongyang. Both Washington and Seoul said the test was not successful, but still drew widespread international condemnation.

Pope Francis said Saturday the nuclear crisis in North Korea has “heated up too much,” and he warned that a war with the isolated nation would destroy a good part of humanity. The pope suggested Norway as a mediator of the crisis. 

“Norway is always ready to help,” he told reporters onboard his papal plane.

South Korea said Sunday Washington has confirmed it will indeed pay the costs for the THAAD anti-missile system, despite President Trump’s remarks last week that South Korea should shoulder the costs.

Officials in Seoul said H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, assured his South Korean counterpart in a telephone conversation Sunday the U.S. is still onboard to pay for the THAAD system that is designed to defend against nuclear-armed North Korea.

Trump threw confusion into the existing payment agreement with South Korea when he told Reuters last week he had informed South Korea, “… it would be appropriate if they paid. It’s a billion-dollar system.” Trump said, “It’s phenomenal, shoots missiles right out of the sky.”

Trump’s White House invitation to Duterte is somewhat surprising. The Philippine president has made several derogatory comments about the U.S. in recent months.

He has also been fanatical about making the Philippines drug-free, with police reported killing 2,724 in the president’s drug campaign. Human Rights Watch, however, says since Duterte came into office in June 2016, police and unidentified gunmen have killed more than 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers.

A Philippine lawyer filed a complaint last week with the International Criminal Court, accusing Duterte of mass murder in his drug campaign.

 
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