The US is giving China a “mission impossible” by insisting that it exert pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear program or face US consequences, Beijing’s ambassador said on Thursday.
“There is one thing that worries me a little bit, and even more than a little bit, is that we’re very often told that China has such an influence over DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and we should force the DPRK to do this or that,” Ambassador Cui Tiankai (崔天凱) told a Washington think tank.
“Otherwise the United States would have to do something that would hurt China’s security interests. You see you are giving us a mission impossible,” he said.
Cui, who has been China’s envoy to Washington since April last year, said he did not “think this was very fair, I don’t think this is a constructive way of working with each other.”
Washington has been leaning on Beijing to take a larger role in reining in the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Cui told an audience at the US Institute of Peace that Beijing was very worried by the threat of nuclear arms on the Korean Peninsula and the risk of another war, armed conflict or chaos.
“The peninsula is just at our doorstep, any chaos, any armed conflict there will certainly have cross-border effects on China,” Cui said. “But this problem cannot be solved by China alone. We need cooperation among the relevant parties.”
The ambassador also called for deeper military-to-military ties between the US and China, even as US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel tours the Asia region on a trip which saw him visit China.
Despite progress over the past few years, strengthened military relations were needed for the new model of relationship which the two nations have agreed to set up, the ambassador said.
“Mil-to-mil relations would be an indispensable part of this new model,” Cui said, arguing that otherwise “this new model would not be effective, and I don’t think it would stand up for very long.”
Hagel and Chinese military leaders, including Minister of National Defense Chang Wanquan (常萬全), traded warnings and rebukes on Tuesday as they clashed over Beijing’s territorial disputes with its neighbors.
“He had a very substantive and direct exchange with his Chinese counterpart,” Cui said. “I think maybe this is not a bad thing. Maybe this is a good thing.”
Cui, who was China’s ambassador to Japan between 2007 and 2009, said there was no room for concessions on territorial integrity and urged “mutual respect” from Washington over its interests.
“Our relations with Japan are much longer than your relations with Japan,” Cui told moderator Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser to former US president George W. Bush.
Similarly, the ambassador deflected questions about China’s troubled relations with some of its other neighbors: “We have so many neighbors. You only have two.”
He also said that the US military could “greatly enhance mutual understanding” if it would stop its reconnaissance activities in China’s exclusive economic zone, which extends over areas disputed with many of its neighbors.
“Still better if you could stop arms sales to Taiwan. That would help us a great deal,” Cui said, with a wry smile.
Cui borrowed a 2008 campaign slogan from Obama, saying he hoped Americans would be optimistic about relations with China “and say again, ‘Yes, we can.’”
Additional reporting by Reuters
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia