The US yesterday stepped up its pressure on China to take stronger action over the North Korean missile crisis, but the chief US envoy left talks in Beijing without an agreement on sanctions.
A day after the US again failed to marshal support from Russia and China at the UN Security Council for sanctions on Pyongyang, envoy Christopher Hill came to Beijing to directly lobby North Korea's closest ally.
The talks came as the secretive state, which test-fired seven missiles into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) on Wednesday, reportedly threatened Japan over its own unilateral sanctions put in force against the communist North.
South Korea, the other major player in the regional drama, ratcheted up the pressure yesterday by saying it would indefinitely put off crucial food aid to North Korea in response to the tests.
Hill, the chief US negotiator for the six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program, met his Chinese counterpart, vice foreign minister Wu Dawei (
He said as he prepared to leave for Seoul on the next leg of the trip, which will also take in Tokyo, that he had discussed how both nations could best react to North Korea's move.
Hill said both sides agreed that the stalled six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program should resume. However, there was no agreement on the contentious issue of sanctions.
"We did have some discussion on the best way to put pressure on. Discussions ... on sanctions were touched upon," he said.
US President George W. Bush lumped North Korea in with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Islamic Iran as an "axis of evil" in 2002, and Washington has repeatedly called on the self-declared nuclear power to abandon its atomic ambitions.
The US has rejected calls for direct talks with the North and instead has urged the Stalinist state to return to six-nation negotiations that it abandoned last year -- because of unilateral US sanctions.
The 15 nations of the Security Council met for a second day on Thursday to discuss a Japanese draft resolution that could lead to sanctions but again ran into opposition from China and Russia, which both have council veto power.
Envoys from the council's five permanent veto-holding members -- the UK, China, France, Russia and the US -- along with Japan were to meet at the US mission to the UN in New York from 1:30pm GMT yesterday.
Bush called Chinese President Hu Jintao (
One of the missiles tested on Wednesday, the Taepodong-2, could possibly reach the US once fully developed, and Bush said it was difficult for the international community to assess North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's intentions.
South Korea said yesterday that despite its sanctions it would stand by its policy of engaging its neighbor, and press ahead with ministerial talks with the North from Tuesday to Friday next week in the southern port of Busan.
"It is hard to predict whether the North will come to the talks or not," said a senior official from the South, which in 2000 launched a "sunshine policy" to reconcile with its longtime adversary.
"We promised to ship 100,000 tonnes of fertilizer aid to the North but we will shelve it. We will also put off 500,000 tonnes of rice aid until any breakthrough is made in the missile issue," the official told journalists.
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