China wants the US and Russia to begin curtailing their nuclear arsenals before it negotiates over its much smaller nuclear force, the leading members of an international disarmament panel said yesterday.
“China’s basic position is that it’s up to others to make the first move in this respect, in particular the United States and Russia,” said Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, after a meeting of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament in Beijing.
“There was some reluctance on the Chinese side to go much further at this stage,” he told a news conference.
Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, a former Japanese foreign minister, jointly lead the commission, funded by their governments, which is exploring ways to reverse the spread of nuclear weapons and will produce a report for world leaders.
They also met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) to discuss the panel’s work.
The commission’s goals gained a boost from US President Barack Obama’s vow that the US was ready to lead steps by all states with atomic weapons to reduce their arsenals.
A conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) also recently defied expectations when the 189 signatories unanimously agreed an agenda for a major review next year.
But those moves have also raised attention on how China, with a much smaller nuclear arsenal than the US or Russia, will handle disarmament expectations. Tokyo has pressed Beijing to cut atomic weapons, and Evans said Washington is also eager to open up talks with China on nuclear weapons.
Kawaguchi said the issues brought “heated” discussion among the experts and officials from across the northeast Asia region attending the Beijing meeting.
China holds about 240 nuclear warheads, compared to the 9,400 held by the US and 13,000 held by Russia, the Federation of American Scientists recently estimated.
But the Pentagon has said China is the only major nuclear power still expanding its arsenal. The People’s Liberation Army has been deploying new ballistic missiles and developing a generation of atomic submarines capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads, observers have said.
Evans said it was unrealistic to expect China to scale back its nuclear force soon, but Beijing could help disarmament by being more candid about the size of its atomic arsenal and the doctrine governing its possible use.
“Realistically, it’s a necessary precondition of anything much more happening [regarding China] that we see some initial movement in the US-Russia talks,” Evans said.
China held its first nuclear test explosion in 1964 and acceded to the NPT in 1992.
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
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
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS