North and South Korea pledged yesterday after ministerial talks to work together for the success of multilateral negotiations in late February on ending the beleaguered North's nuclear programs.
The Seoul meeting had been marked by testy exchanges that experts said showed Pyongyang felt increasingly cornered in the world community, especially following revelations this week that a top Pakistani scientist had sold it nuclear technology.
The two Koreas will join the US, China, Russia and Japan in the Chinese capital in a second round of six-party nuclear talks set to begin on Feb. 25.
PHOTO: AP
"South and North agreed to cooperate for a fruitful second round of six-party talks to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully," said a joint statement issued after three days of inter-Korean ministerial talks in Seoul.
The 13th set of Cabinet-level contacts since the capitalist South and communist North began their cautious reconciliation process four years ago began just hours after North Korea announced a long-awaited date for the six-way talks.
But the upbeat mood soon dissipated as the significance of the revelations from Pakistan sank in.
"North Korea is in a difficult situation, in a jam," said Kim Sung-han, a North Korea-US relations expert at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.
He said the dramatic confessions by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, had undercut Pyongyang's efforts to deny the existence of a clandestine uranium enrichment program that was the catalyst for the nuclear dispute.
"North Korea definitely feels a difference in temperature now," said Kim after South Korea rebuffed the North Korean delegates' efforts to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington with well-rehearsed calls for "ethnic cooperation."
The North's chief delegate, Kim Ryong-song, sought to blame the US for the relatively slow pace of inter-Korean economic projects and accused Seoul of colluding with Washington.
"To get drawn into the cooperation against the North is to drive the nation to mutual destruction," Kim said on Wednesday.
South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun, Kim's counterpart, chided him for creating unnecessary trouble.
"If our relations deteriorate, it will only be damaging to the North," Jeong said.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
RSS