Beijing — A top North Korean diplomat repeated an offer for international talks over his country’s disputed nuclear programme during a meeting in China yesterday, saying the denuclearisation of the peninsula was the “dying wish” of North Korea’s founder.
The Beijing trip by First Vice-Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan comes just days after North Korea offered talks with the United States to ease tensions that spiked this year when Pyongyang threatened the US and South Korea with nuclear war. The White House said any talks must involve action by the North to show that it is moving towards disarmament.
China’s Foreign Ministry, after Mr Kim’s talks with Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui, cited the North Korean as saying it was seeking talks.
“The denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula was the dying wish of Chairman Kim Il Sung and General Secretary Kim Jong Il,” a Chinese Ministry statement cited Mr Kim as saying.
North Korea was founded by Kim Il Sung. His son Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011, oversaw the North’s first two nuclear tests. It conducted a third test in February.
“North Korea is willing to have dialogue with all sides and attend any kind of meeting, including six-party talks, and hopes to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue via negotiation,” Mr Kim Kye Gwan was cited as saying.
Mr Zhang said talks, stability and the denuclearisation of the peninsula were in everyone’s best interests. “China supports talks between the various parties and hopes for an early resumption of the six-party talks,” he said.
China has repeatedly urged Pyongyang to return to so-called six-party talks aimed at getting the North to halt its nuclear programme. In 2009, North Korea said it would never return to those talks. The four other participants in the negotiations were South Korea, the US, Japan and Russia.
The talks are the highest-level contact between China and North Korea since US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in California earlier this month and agreed the North had to denuclearise.
North Korea has repeatedly said it will never abandon its nuclear weapons, calling them its “treasured sword”, a term one of its official newspapers used again yesterday. Late last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent another envoy to Beijing. According to a source with knowledge of that visit, Chinese officials gave the envoy a lukewarm reception while saying Beijing wanted an end to the North’s nuclear and missile tests.
Mr Li Bin, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy in Beijing, said he did not believe North Korea was ready to discuss its nuclear programme with China. “My guess is that they are coming to Beijing to avoid a situation in which the relationship between the two countries gets worse.”
China, the closest thing Pyongyang has to a major ally, backed the latest round of United Nations sanctions on North Korea, imposed after its Feb 12 nuclear test. South Korean President Park Geun Hye will visit China next week, where North Korea is likely to be high on the agenda. Reuters
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk"));
No comments:
Post a Comment