China's point man on North Korea held talks with officials from the South yesterday ahead of crucial six-nation talks aimed at resolving the standoff over the communist state's nuclear weapons program.
Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi and South Korea's top Foreign Ministry officials called for joint efforts to secure concrete results at the second round of meetings, which begin Feb. 25.
Meanwhile, North Korea said yesterday it urged Japan to support its offer to freeze all its nuclear activities in return for economic concessions from the US.
"We hope that substantive results could be made through joint efforts at the second round of talks," Wang said, heading into discussions with Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck in Seoul.
Wang and Lee represented their nations in a first round of talks among the US, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan in August, which ended without much progress.
"Whatever difficulties surface, we must firmly push ahead with the process of peace talks," said Wang, who also discussed the upcoming talks with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon and Vice Foreign Minister Choi Young-jin.
They had "in-depth" discussions on a range of issues, including the North's nuclear freeze proposal, said Cho Tae-yong, chief of Seoul's newly established task force for the nuclear dispute.
North Korea has offered to freeze all its nuclear activities as a first step in resolving the nuclear dispute, only if Washington provides free oil shipments, lifts economic sanctions and removes the Communist nation from its list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
Washington has demanded that North Korea first start dismantling its nuclear programs.
Before coming to Seoul, Wang discussed the nuclear dispute with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.
North Korea said it had won Chinese support for its freeze proposal during Kim's visit to Beijing.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS