The US delegate to talks aimed at the nuclear disarmament of North Korea said problems lay ahead as negotiators yesterday discussed rules about verifying the reclusive state’s nuclear activities.
North Korea, which tested a nuclear bomb in 2006, partly disabled its Yongbyon nuclear complex this year in a disarmament-for-aid deal, but the six-party disarmament talks have failed to agree on a protocol to check the North’s declaration of nuclear activities.
Chief US delegate Christopher Hill said all sides — North Korea and South Korea, China, the US, Japan and Russia — had to see what the reaction was to a draft text offered by China that outlined a way to verify nuclear information.
“I think the key thing is to figure out whether this is a draft that everyone can work on or not,” Hill told reporters.
Asked if a consensus had been reached on taking nuclear samples from North Korea, or verifying that Pyongyang was abiding by its agreements, he said: “I’m not aware that there’s anything that could be defined as no longer a problem.”
Japan’s top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura, was similarly downbeat.
“We cannot have preconceptions about what will happen at the six-party talks currently being held in Beijing,” he told reporters in Tokyo.
Any progress at the negotiations in Beijing, which have stretched over the years, would be a diplomatic trophy for outgoing US President George W. Bush, weeks before president-elect Barack Obama takes office.
The most contention has centered on the North’s reluctance to allow international inspectors to take nuclear samples out of the country for testing. Two South Korean newspapers — the Dong-a Ilbo and the JoongAng Ilbo — said in unsourced reports that the talks were approaching a compromise over the issue.
But many analysts believe North Korea is in no hurry to make concessions, waiting to test Obama’s intentions. A South Korean expert on North Korea said Pyongyang was unlikely to make real concessions on verification any time soon.
“North Korea will never allow sampling in the second-phase process because it is a bargaining chip it wants to hold on to until the last moment of the talks,” said Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University. “It is putting all its efforts into better positioning itself at the negotiating table so that it would still have something to use as a leverage in the final phase of the talks.”
Meanwhile, North Korea yesterday claimed the US had recognized it as a nuclear weapons state after a US defense report described it as such.
The outgoing Bush administration has not acknowledged North Korea as a nuclear weapons state as it pushes on with six-party talks aimed at scrapping the communist country’s atomic weapons.
“The US government ranked the DPRK [North Korea] among nuclear weapons states,” Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
“It is the first time that the US officially recognized the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state and announced it in its government report,” it added.
The Joint Forces Command report caused a diplomatic flap, with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan denying yesterday that it reflected Washington’s official position.
The US Defense Department also said the report does not reflect Washington’s official refusal to recognize North Korea’s nuclear status.
“The rim of the great Asian continent is already home to five nuclear powers: China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Russia,” said the report.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing