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.
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