Top US arms negotiator John Bolton, widely seen as a "hawk" on North Korea, holds talks with South Korean officials yesterday amid signs of differences over how to tackle the North's atomic ambitions.
Bolton, an undersecretary of state with considerable influence in the Bush administration, said in China on Monday he had again raised the US position of involving the UN Security Council in the quest for a resolution to the nuclear crisis.
It was not clear how China responded. It has previously said it is against UN involvement. The South is also not keen now.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry said Bolton would meet South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan later today. He may also hold talks with key members of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's security and foreign policy team on how to persuade the North to return to talks on its nuclear weapons plans.
Yoon was asked by the Financial Times in an interview published yesterday about the Security Council, which Bolton wants to intervene if other diplomatic channels fail.
"I think it is better for us to resolve this outside the UN framework," Yoon said, saying diplomatic efforts were under way.
Bolton was unlikely to brief reporters on those talks yesterday, officials said. He has a news conference scheduled for today, following a speech. Bolton arrived in South Korea on Tuesday from China on the second leg of a three-city tour to seek ways to resolve the crisis. He visits Tokyo next.
On a trip to Seoul last August, Bolton delivered a tough speech which presaged the nuclear crisis that unfolded two months later. In the speech, he described North Korea as the world's foremost peddler of ballistic missile technology.
In Beijing, Bolton met Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
After discussions with Li's deputies on Monday, Bolton told reporters he was no more optimistic than before about North Korea's willingness to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs and he had little progress to report.
China brokered initial talks between the US and North Korea on the crisis in April, but they amounted to little. Beijing has made a strong diplomatic push in recent weeks to bring the two together for a second round.
There had been speculation over the past two weeks that the talks could reconvene in next month or September. But Yoon said on Monday negotiations on restarting talks have bogged down.
The crisis erupted last October when US officials said Pyongyang had said it was pursuing a secret nuclear programme.
On Monday, Bolton said China appeared to have run out of diplomatic options to get North Korea back to the negotiating table, but noted it had "substantial" leverage as the main supplier of fuel and aid to its neighbor.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion