South Korean and US officials will meet as early as next week to follow up on an agreement between their leaders to formulate a joint approach on how to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, South Korean officials said yesterday.
North Korea was a key topic when US President George W. Bush met South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Washington on Thursday, as the allies have increasingly differed over how to deal with the recalcitrant regime that fired off missiles in July and is feared to possibly be moving to test a nuclear bomb.
Roh's chief security aide, Song Min-soon, told reporters after the summit that the two leaders agreed to put together a "joint comprehensive approach" in efforts to move forward stalled international talks on the North's nuclear program.
"A follow-up consultation on this is expected to take place as early as next week," Song told reporters in Washington, according to a transcript of his briefing posted on the presidential office's Web site.
Bush and Roh used a White House summit to play up their common goal of pushing North Korea back to the negotiating table after a nearly year-long hiatus, but avoided airing divergent views on how to deal with Pyongyang.
The US has led efforts to impose tougher UN sanctions on North Korea. North Korea is believed to have enough nuclear material to build as many as a dozen nuclear bombs, but it has never tested one.
South Korea prefers a softer approach towards its neighbor and has warned against backing North Korea into a corner.
Tempering his usually hardline tone towards North Korea, Bush said Washington and its allies were "determined to resolve this issue peacefully but recognizes a threat posed by a country in the region armed with a nuclear weapon."
North Korea has refused to return to the talks with South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US. It demands that Washington first ends a crackdown on its finances.
Bush said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il should resume the six-party negotiations if he wants to end his country's isolation and improve the lives of his people.
"If he were to verifiably get rid of his weapons programs, there is clearly a better way forward," Bush told reporters.
Roh did not repeat his government's earlier criticism of the US approach.
He stressed instead that South Korea had also taken measures such as suspending rice and fertilizer aid in response to North Korea's missile tests, but that it preferred not to label them sanctions "because we do not want to hurt inter-Korean relations."
However, when asked whether US threats of further sanctions jeopardized chances of bringing North Korea back to the table, he said: "This is not the appropriate time to think about the possibility of a failure of the six-party process."
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS