South Korea yesterday warned North Korea against conducting any nuclear tests, saying they would further isolate Pyongyang and undermine its security, while the US said the North's resistance to international disarmament talks was unacceptable.
Concerns that the North is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal have escalated after it apparently shut down a nuclear reactor recently -- a move that could allow it to harvest weapons-grade plutonium.
"If North Korea takes a measure of recklessly conducting a nuclear test, that will further isolate North Korea, and North Korea will be going on a road that cannot have its future guaranteed," Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said in a speech yesterday in Seoul.
"Nuclear weapons can never guarantee North Korea's security, and will only bring about and worsen the isolation of its politics and economy," Ban said, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
The warning came after some US media reported over the weekend that Pyongyang might be preparing for its first nuclear test.
Moon Hee-sang, chairman of the ruling Uri Party, played down those reports, saying yesterday that he was not aware of any signs that the North will conduct a nuclear test.
The top US envoy on the North Korean nuclear issue met with South Korean officials yesterday and discussed ways to revive stalled, six-nation disarmament talks.
"What we are focusing on is the diplomatic track and the need to get the talks going, and more importantly, once they get going, to achieve progress in the talks," Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said following his meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Song Min-soon.
"We need to be very clear that it is not acceptable for [the North] to be staying out of the talks," he said.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
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Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
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