Delegations to six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program started leaving Beijing yesterday, a day after the discussions fizzled out, making little substantial progress.
As the Japanese and South Korean teams packed up after the four-day talks, China was eager to put a positive spin on the meeting which ended with only a vague agreement to establish working-level groups and reconvene sometime before June.
"Despite a harsh Beijing spring wind, China, North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia used reason and wisdom in the second round of six-party talks to give new hope to the peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue," the leading People's Daily said in an editorial.
The most optimistic result was that all sides were able to hold "substantial discussions" in a cool and calm atmosphere, it added.
All sides also recommitted themselves to a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula, it said.
The US also expressed satisfaction after the talks, while Pyongyang blamed Washington for a lack of substantial progress.
Washington said, despite North Korea's failure to admit to a uranium-based weapons program, it was happy with the way the talks appeared to have isolated North Korea from the other participants.
"While key differences remain that will need to be addressed in further rounds of discussions, this round of talks made progress on a regularized process for the peaceful and diplomatic resolution of this issue," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington overnight.
In Beijing Saturday, a senior US official told journalists the talks were "very successful in terms of moving the agenda towards our goal of the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling [CVID] of the DPRK's [North Korea's] nuclear program.
"CVID is now more on the table than ever. It's been accepted by all the participants except the DPRK," he said, arguing that Pyongyang found itself increasingly isolated during the negotiations.
North Korea's chief delegate Kim Kye-gwan said: "These talks could not produce substantial and positive outcomes."
"The future prospects are wholly dependent on the United States," he said at a rare press conference at the North Korean embassy in Beijing following the talks.
The Stalinist regime insists it must be compensated before abandoning its nuclear program, while the US insists that North Korea must act first before receiving any security guarantees or economic and energy aid.
China had been pushing hard for some sort of joint document to emerge from the discussions, which started Wednesday, but instead a chairman's statement was all that resulted.
The talks ended despite a joint offer on the second day from China, South Korea and Russia to give energy aid to the starving Stalinist nation in an effort to coax North Korea into beginning the process of freezing its nuclear weapons program.
Japan and the US refused to participate in the offer, but jointly said they "respected" the gesture of the three nations.
The meeting did however see small progress in Japan's efforts to resolve its bilateral dispute with North Korea on the kidnapping of Japenese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing