North Korea urged the United Nations yesterday to dissolve the UN Command on the tense peninsula and press for the withdrawal of US troops based in South Korea.
In a rare letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, North Korea's representative at the Korean War truce village called on the United Nations to dissolve the 50-year-old UN Command.
"It is our view that a war in Korea is almost unavoidable as long as the US hostile policy toward the DPRK goes on," said the 1,100-word letter, which the official KCNA news agency said was written by Colonel-General Ri Chan-bok. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Ri is the long-serving North Korean representative at the Panmunjom truce village, which lies in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone that has separated the South from the North since the Korean War. North Korea remains technically at war with the US-led UN forces in the South because the conflict ended in an armed truce that has not been replaced by a peace treaty.
It was not immediately clear whether Annan received Li's letter, which was dated July 22 and published yesterday, the 51st anniversary of the armistice which stopped fighting in the Korean War. The US military in Seoul had no immediate comment.
Ri's letter reiterated North Korean war threats and demands for a US pullout and voiced alarm at recent American moves to upgrade military readiness while cutting forces. The US announced last month that it planned to withdraw a third of its 37,500 troops from South Korea as part of a long-term global force realignment. It also plans to move forward deployed troops away from the border with the North.
To assuage South Korean concerns that the move would weaken defenses against the North's 1.1 million-strong army, the Pentagon said last year it would spend US$11 billion on advanced weaponry.
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
Another tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG (liquefied natural gas) 2 project has docked in a Chinese port, ship-tracking data showed, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) tracking data indicated the Russian Voskhod LNG tanker was anchored at an LNG terminal in the port of Tieshan in Guangxi, China. The Russian flagged tanker, with a cargo of 150,000 cubic meters of LNG, was loaded up at the Arctic LNG 2 facility in Gydan in northern Siberia on July 19, LSEG data showed.
RSS