South Korea offered North Korea unspecified compensation yesterday for giving up its nuclear program and the US said it had "no intention" of invading the reclusive nation as six-country talks on Pyongyang's atomic ambitions convened.
Amid an outwardly collegial atmosphere, the tensions of the moment -- and the 16-month standoff between the US and the North that led up to it -- were clear.
The North's delegate, Kim Kye Gwan, said he would be "maintaining our principles" hours after his country issued a last-minute demand for compensation for shutting down the program, and Washington's delegate said nothing but a wholesale elimination of the nuclear activities would do.
"The United States seeks complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all North Korea's nuclear programs, both plutonium and uranium," Assistant US Secretary of State James Kelly said in opening remarks.
North Korea's partners in the talks -- South Korea, China, the US, Japan and Russia -- all say they want a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula.
At issue are allegations that Pyongyang has a uranium-based weapons program as well as its known plutonium-based one. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's government has denied having a uranium-based program.
The dispute erupted in October 2002 when the US said North Korea had acknowledged the existence of a nuclear program that violated a 1994 agreement that bound Pyongyang to renounce nuclear development in exchange for oil and other aid.
After the first session yesterday, South Korea said it had proposed "countermeasures" if the North froze its nuclear program and showed signs of dismantling it. Seoul's head delegate, Lee Soo-hyuck, said he presented the proposal during the opening session.
"If it is such a freeze, we can push for countermeasures," Lee told reporters, using a term that is believed to refer to compensation for the North's giving up its nuclear ambitions.
He didn't elaborate, and it was unclear whether the US had directly endorsed the proposal.
Last week, South Korean officials said Seoul was ready to resume energy aid to its communist neighbor after the dispute is resolved and the North dismantles its nuclear programs.
Lee said he had told North Korea that its freeze must cover all nuclear programs and be followed "in a short period of time" by steps toward a complete and verifiable dismantling of nuclear capabilities.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS