China pressed regional powers yesterday to restart talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and Seoul offered aid to its destitute neighbor despite a new round of US sanctions against Pyongyang.
In a move that could ease tensions on the peninsula, South Korea made its first large-scale offer of humanitarian aid to the North since the sinking of one of its warships in March.
Seoul offered 10 billion won (US$8.4 million) to North Korea after heavy rains in July and last month in its northern and eastern provinces forced thousands from their homes and put farmland under water.
PHOTO: AFP
Seoul cut off most of its ties with Pyongyang after accusing the North of torpedoing the Cheonan corvette and demanded an apology.
North Korea says it did not carry out the attack, and has told its only major ally, China, it is committed to denuclearizing the peninsula and wants to resume the aid-for-disarmament talks.
Analysts say the North’s willingness to return to talks could be a sign international sanctions are hurting the isolated state, whose battered economy is just 3 percent the size of the South.
China is lobbying neighbors to sign up for renewed talks, and yesterday Beijing’s nuclear envoy met his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo to discuss a plan to get the six parties back to the negotiating table.
“Both of us agreed to work together to safeguard peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula. Meanwhile, we also agreed to work together with the others to push forward the resumption of the six-party talks as soon as possible,” Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Dawei (武大偉) said.
A South Korean diplomatic source said over the weekend that China had proposed a three-stage process to Seoul to restart the talks. He said North Korea and the US should first conduct bilateral talks that could open the way to the broader, six-party negotiations, the source said.
China’s regional lobbying and its courting of secretive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il highlight the pressures that North Korea — isolated, poor and with a brace of primitive nuclear bombs — has brought to bear on the region that is home to the world’s second and third-biggest economies and a big US military presence.
US President Barack Obama broadened financial sanctions on North Korea on Monday and froze the US assets of four North Korean citizens and eight firms in part to punish the North for the sinking of the Cheonan.
US officials hope the measures, which target North Korean entities that trade in conventional arms and luxury products and that counterfeit US currency, will also sharpen pressure on the North to abandon its nuclear programs.
A foreign ministry spokesman in Seoul welcomed the toughened US sanctions.
“It can be assessed that the US sanctions regime on North Korea has been completed overall,” he said.
The new US sanctions steps aim to target the leadership of the isolated, authoritarian nation, which is preparing for a key party conference that analysts say could nail down succession plans, involving Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS