North Korea has told Russia’s visiting foreign minister that it has no further use for international nuclear disarmament talks, the communist state’s official media reported yesterday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is trying to persuade Pyongyang to return to the six-nation negotiations, but reported tough going after talks with his counterpart, North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun, on Thursday.
Pyongyang’s foreign ministry, in a statement on the Korean central news agency, said Lavrov’s team had “paid attention to the DPRK’s [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] position that it no longer needs six-party talks.”
The Russian is the first high-level official to visit North Korea since it announced it was quitting the talks and would restart a program to make weapons-grade plutonium.
North Korea was reacting angrily to UN condemnation of its April 5 rocket launch, which it said put a satellite in orbit. Other nations saw it as a disguised missile test.
Russia and China, which have traditionally had friendly ties with North Korea, resisted pressure for a binding UN resolution in response to the launch.
But they supported a statement that condemned Pyongyang and tightened existing sanctions.
The foreign ministry said Lavrov in his talks with Pak reaffirmed Russia’s position that it opposed UN sanctions against North Korea.
“Both sides recognized a satellite launch as the sovereign right of each country,” it said.
Russia is involved in the six-nation talks, which also include North Korea and South Korea, China, Japan and the US.
“So far we do not expect any immediate breakthroughs,” Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying after meeting his counterpart. “It is a difficult situation but one does not need to succumb to emotions and should concentrate on the foundation we already have.”
He was to fly to South Korea later yesterday to brief South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan.
North Korea’s military believes the six-party talks failed to ease the threat posed by the US military, said Chosun Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper published in Japan that generally reflects official thinking.
Tensions caused by the rocket launch proved its stance was right, it said.
From now the army will exercise a greater influence over nuclear policies, the paper said, suggesting there could be another nuclear test.
Chosun Sinbo said the administration of US President Barack Obama must try to eradicate the distrust of North Korea’s army if it wants to avoid following in the footsteps of its predecessor, which drove North Korea to conduct a nuclear test.
Pyongyang will further cement its status as a nuclear state, the paper said, recalling that the first test in 2006 followed UN sanctions.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion