North Korea yesterday defended its shock nuclear weapons test as the only way to avert a war as its chief negotiator met with his US counterpart to discuss resuming multi-party disarmament talks.
US envoy Christopher Hill held a rare meeting on Tuesday with the North's Kim Kye-gwan at the US embassy in Berlin and, although there was no breakthrough, officials said it set the pace for a resumption of full six-party talks.
"The Berlin meeting should lay a good groundwork for an agreement on what initial steps to take to implement the Sept. 19 statement," South Korea's Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said, referring to a 2005 accord offering the North security and economic aid guarantees in return for disarmament.
Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's ruling party paper, said the Oct. 9 test, the regime's first atomic weapons detonation ever, was in self-defense.
"There is no doubt that a war would have broken out ... if [North Korea] had failed last year to shatter the moves of the US imperialists to provoke a war against it with its strong self-defensive deterrent," it said.
It accused the US of "still whetting the sword of aggression" against North Korea under the disguise of seeking peaceful dialogue.
The test triggered global outrage and UN sanctions, and in December senior negotiators from the six nations in the talks -- the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US -- met for five days in Beijing.
No progress was reported as North Korea refused substantiative discussions about nuclear disarmament in protest at separate US financial sanctions.
Bilateral US-North Korean talks on the financial sanctions, notably on a Macau bank accused of illicit dealings on behalf of Pyongyang, are to resume next week.
No date has yet been fixed for the next round of full six-party negotiations, however.
Song urged Pyongyang to "initiate the process of dismantling its nuclear programs" to enable others to "take corresponding steps" in return.
In last month's talks in Beijing, the US reportedly demanded that North Korea report all of its nuclear facilities and program and accept UN atomic agency inspectors.
The US was also said to have demanded the closure of North Korea's plutonium-producing reactor in Yongbyon and its nuclear test site.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS