North Korea is dragging its feet over restarting six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons program, despite other participating countries' willingness to move ahead as soon as possible, South Korea's top nuclear negotiator said yesterday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, South Korea's chief delegate to the talks, gave the assessment before meeting his Japanese counterpart, Mitoji Yabunaka, in Seoul yesterday to discuss resuming the nuclear negotiations.
A second round of talks -- which involved the US, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia -- ended in Beijing last month without a major breakthrough.
The participants are trying to form a so-called "working group" next month to nail down details before a full third round, which they'd agreed to convene by June.
"All the countries, except North Korea, think that the working group should meet as soon as possible," Lee said. "Once again, the question of when the talks will resume seems to depend on North Korea's attitude."
Lee hoped that Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
Li would be the first Chinese foreign minister to visit the North in five years.
China, one of communist North Korea's last remaining ideological allies, is a key mediator in the nuclear dispute.
The US insists that the North dismantle its nuclear weapons programs completely and verifiably. Pyongyang says it will do so only if the US provides economic aid and security guarantees.
North Korea threatened on Friday to boost its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity," blaming the US for the lack of progress in the nuclear meetings.
It also claimed that joint US-South Korean military exercises, which began on Sunday, were heightening tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS