North Korea said the US was blaming it for sinking a South Korean warship in order to keep a US Marine base in Japan and make China, the North’s only major ally, feel “awkward.”
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama met on South Korea’s Jeju island yesterday and escalating tension on the Korean peninsula was high on the agenda.
The US and South Korea have accused North Korea of the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, in which 46 South Korean sailors died. But China, eager not to upset stability on the Korean peninsula, has not apportioned blame.
The mounting antagonism between the two Koreas has unnerved investors, worried the confrontation could erupt into conflict. Many analysts say that neither side is ready to go to war but warn more skirmishes may lie ahead, especially along their disputed sea border off the west coast.
“The US secretary of state [Hillary Clinton] let loose a spate of sheer lies to brand the DPRK as the chief culprit of the warship sinking during her junkets to Japan, China and south Korea,” the KCNA news agency quoted the North Korean Foreign Ministry as saying.
DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In English, KCNA refers to “south” Korea, with no capital “S,” as it considers it part of the DPRK, not a separate country.
KCNA said US President Barack Obama’s administration was using the episode to appear strong ahead of mid-term elections, to scare Japan into keeping US troops on Okinawa and to justify its policy of “strategic patience” designed to “degrade the environment for international investment” in North Korea.
“Fourthly, it became possible for the US to put China into an awkward position and keep hold on Japan and south Korea as its servants,” it said.
Hatoyama has abandoned a pledge to move a US Marine base off the island of Okinawa, saying it was essential for security.
Japan is also toughening sanc-tions against North Korea, the top government spokesman, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano, said on Friday.
South Korea, the US and Japan have urged China, host of on-again, off-again talks aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program, to take a stand on the Cheonan incident. Beijing has resisted turning publicly on North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-il visited China this month.
Wen is walking a delicate line between shielding North Korea in an effort to maintain stability in the region and assuaging the deepening worries about China’s perceived neutrality in South Korea and Japan, two of its largest trading partners.
Wen told the South Korean president on Friday that Beijing would not “harbor” anyone responsible once China had made its own “fair and objective judgment on who’s at fault,” a South Korean official told reporters.
North Korea has denounced the investigation as biased.
It says it will rip up military agreements with the South guaranteeing the safety of cross-border exchanges and has reportedly put its military on combat readiness, after Seoul said it would ban trade with the North and stop the North’s commercial ships from using South Korean waters.
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