North Korea vowed yesterday to bolster its atomic arsenal in response to what it called Washington’s “persistent hostile policy,” even as a special envoy for US President Barack Obama traveled to the region in a bid to draw Pyongyang back to nuclear negotiations.
Envoy Stephen Bosworth, speaking in Beijing before heading to Seoul yesterday, said Washington was ready and willing to talk directly with Pyongyang.
“The United States reiterates its desire to engage both multilaterally and bilaterally with North Korea,” Bosworth told reporters after holding talks with senior Chinese officials on Thursday. “We believe very strongly that the solution to the tensions and problems of the area now lies in dialogue and negotiation.”
But North Korea dismissed the Obama administration’s stance as “unchanged” from a previous policy of hostility.
“Nothing would be expected from the US, which remains unchanged in its hostility toward its dialogue partner,” the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried yesterday by state media. The North “will bolster its nuclear deterrent as it has already clarified.”
Pyongyang, which carried out a nuclear test in 2006 and is believed to have enough plutonium to make at least a half-dozen atomic bombs, has been locked in a standoff over its nuclear program for months.
Pyongyang called the April 5 launch a successful bid to send a satellite into space. The US and others saw it as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions barring the North from ballistic missile-related activity since the same technology can be used to fire an intercontinental missile mounted with nuclear arms.
South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper recently reported “brisk” activity has been detected at the North’s nuclear test site, citing an unnamed South Korean government source. The report could not be confirmed.
In Washington, a counterproliferation official would not confirm whether the US believes North Korea is on the cusp of conducting a nuclear test but said Pyongyang is capable of conducting one quickly if desired. The official spoke on Thursday on condition of anonymity.
Bosworth and nuclear talks envoy Sung Kim had no set plans to visit Pyongyang during his regional tour, which includes stops in Tokyo and Moscow in addition to Beijing and Seoul, the State Department said.
While campaigning for the presidency, Obama said he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il if it helps denuclearization. His administration has so far maintained its support for talks within the framework of nuclear negotiations.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington’s goal was to get North Korea back to the disarmament process, but warned it would be difficult.
“We may have to show some patience before that is achieved,” she told reporters after talks on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose trip to Pyongyang last month produced little progress in getting the North back to the negotiating table.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Residents across Japan’s Pacific coast yesterday rushed to higher ground as tsunami warnings following a massive earthquake off Russia’s far east resurfaced painful memories and lessons from the devastating 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. Television banners flashed “TSUNAMI! EVACUATE!” and similar warnings as most broadcasters cut regular programming to issue warnings and evacuation orders, as tsunami waves approached Japan’s shores. “Do not be glued to the screen. Evacuate now,” a news presenter at public broadcaster NHK shouted. The warnings resurfaced memories of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, when more than 15,000 people died after a magnitude 9 tremor triggered a massive tsunami that
RSS