China’s foreign minister said yesterday that Beijing is troubled by North Korea’s plan to launch a long-range rocket and has urged more diplomacy to handle the situation, a measured response to a provocation that has unsettled the region.
Meanwhile, a South Korean official said yesterday that North Korea appears to be preparing for a third nuclear test after the rocket launch.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) said he discussed North Korea’s launch plan during trilateral talks with his counterparts from Seoul and Tokyo in Ningbo, China.
The foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea both said that a launch would violate UN Security Council resolutions.
However, China, the North’s closest ally, did not echo that view and instead urged further dialogue and communication.
“The Chinese side is troubled by the developments, and strongly encourages everyone involved on all sides, at high and low levels, to remain calm and reasonable,” Yang told reporters. “These issues need to be worked out in a diplomatic and peaceful manner.”
Meanwhile, preparations are under way in the North Korean town of Punggye-ri, where the North carried out two previous tests of a nuclear bomb in 2006 and 2009, a South Korean official said on condition of anonymity.
“Recent satellite images led us to conclude the North has been secretly digging a new underground tunnel in the nuclear test site,” the source said.
Construction of the new tunnel appears to be nearly complete, he said. The North tested atomic weapons in October 2006 and May 2009. Both were held one to three months after missile tests.
Furthermore, Patriot missiles were deployed on Saturday at the Japanese defense ministry in downtown Tokyo and at two other bases in the region to protect the greater Tokyo area.
The ministry also dispatched three Aegis destroyers carrying interceptor missiles, reportedly to the East China Sea, beneath the rocket’s forecast flight path.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
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