China quickened its diplomatic efforts to ease tensions between North and South Korea, calling yesterday for an emergency meeting of envoys to North Korean nuclear disarmament talks.
Chinese envoy Wu Dawei (武大偉) said chief negotiators to the six-nation talks are being asked to come to Beijing early next month for the emergency session “to exchange views on major issues of concern to the parties at present.”
“I want to stress that a series of complicated factors have recently emerged on the Korean Peninsula,” Wu said in a statement he read to reporters in Beijing. “The international community, particularly the members of the six-party talks, is deeply concerned.”
The talks would bring together the main regional powers — the US, Japan and Russia as well as China and the two Koreas — that have tried fitfully for seven years to persuade Pyongyang to relinquish its nuclear programs.
Wu stressed, however, that the consultations did not constitute a formal resumption of the stalled six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programs, but he hoped they would lead to such a resumption soon.
South Korea’s Presidential Office said now was not the time to discuss the resumption of six-party nuclear talks, Yonhap news agency said.
Blue House spokesman Hong Sang-pyo said the subject of the multilateral forum was raised during South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s meeting with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo (戴秉國), but Lee “made it clear it was not the time to discuss it.”
Japan said it would deal cautiously with the Chinese proposal.
“We would deal with the issue cautiously while cooperating with South Korea and the United States,” Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama said, Jiji Press reported.
Wu’s appeal is China’s most public diplomatic intervention since its ally North Korea pummeled a South Korean island with an artillery barrage on Tuesday, aggravating already high tensions on the peninsula. At first slow to react, China has been under pressure by the US to use its historically strong relations with Pyongyang to defuse the crisis and over the weekend picked up the pace of its diplomacy.
Underscoring Beijing’s concern about the latest clash between the Koreas, its diplomatic initiatives come as the US and South Korean military are conducting war games in the Yellow Sea. Beijing vehemently opposed such exercises four months ago during a previous spike in tensions between the Koreas, but has issued only pro forma objections this time.
Wu did not specify a date next month for when the six nations would meet. He said they need “to exchange views on these major issues and make due contribution to maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula and easing the tension in Northeast Asia.”
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