Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has stepped up pressure on China to use its special influence to resolve the burgeoning North Korea security crisis, declaring the entire world is concerned about the rogue nation's threats of nuclear war.
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He branded its conduct reckless and dangerous while emphasising the need for resolution through peaceful means.
"The whole world is concerned about the reckless and dangerous conduct of the North Korean regime, it threatens regional stability, it threatens global peace, and the time has come for all parties but in particular China, which has the closest relationship with North Korea, to bring pressure to bear on North Korea, through the sanctions regime and other means, to ensure that they cease this reckless and dangerous conduct," he said.
North Korean used its state media arm on Tuesday to warn of a nuclear attack on the United States as a US Navy strike group, led by the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, headed into the region in a show of force by the Trump administration.
Mr Turnbull's words followed another overnight tweet from the US President, suggesting North Korea was "looking for trouble" and warning the US would "solve the problem" with or without Beijing's help.
Speaking in India's business and financial capital of Mumbai ahead of his departure for Australia, Mr Turnbull also used the occasion to bank Australia's strategic future on an emergent democratic India, whose colossal size and mounting economic weight he expects will allow it to rival the major global powers of China and the world's dominant player, the US.
"India is enormously important," he said.
"India is the second-largest country by population, it will shortly be the largest, it is evolving into an economic superpower and one that will have the military and strategic clout that comes with that kind of economic strength, so India is committed to the maintenance of the international rules-based order, we share the same values of democracy and the rule of law."
Tension has escalated sharply in recent weeks amid concerns that reclusive North Korea may soon conduct a sixth nuclear test.
"We are sending an armada. Very powerful," Mr Trump told the Fox Business Network. "We have submarines. Very powerful. Far more powerful than the aircraft carrier. That I can tell you."
Mr Turnbull's comments on international security while in India have imparted a growing belief that his government has in India's potential power as an Indo-Pacific power and a democratic force for good.
Along with stalled free trade talks, the perilous situation in Syria and on the Korean Peninsula formed the basis of his extended one-on-one talks with India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
???But while the Turnbull government is keen to highlight India's "democratic" credentials and growing strategic and commercial heft, critics have branded Mr Modi an "autocrat", citing state-sanctioned violence against some religious minorities on behalf of the dominant Hindu religion.
Australia's new India focus is likely to be viewed with suspicion in Beijing, which believes it represents an attempt to encircle China in a containment policy designed to limit the strategic power of the Middle Kingdom.
- with Reuters
