The US and South Korea pressed North Korea yesterday to suspend nuclear development after the US envoy to disarmament talks accused it of continuing to operate a plutonium-producing reactor.
"The continued [operation] of nuclear facilities has to be suspended," South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said as negotiators headed into a second day of six-nation talks on demands that the North give up its nuclear programs.
US envoy Christopher Hill accused the North of continuing to operate a reactor at Yongbyon that produces plutonium, a fuel for bombs, despite a Sept. 19 pledge to give up nuclear development.
"Every day that goes on, the amount of plutonium theoretically can increase, so that's our concern," said Hill, a US assistant secretary of state, on Wednesday.
"That means that we have a bigger problem than when we ended on Sept. 19. And I think the time to stop reprocessing, the time to stop that reactor, is now," he said
Song said he would present Seoul's roadmap toward disarmament in the talks yesterday.
Diplomats say the talks this week -- the fifth in a series would focus on the contentious details of how North Korea would disarm, how that would be verified and what the sNorth would get in return.
China expects this week's talks to run until today and then recess to let diplomats attend the APEC summit in South Korea next week.
Meanwhile, in Washington, a senior US official said on Wednesday that the US will stop shipments of food aid to North Korea this year if Pyongyang forces the UN's World Food Program (WFP) to halt its food deliveries.
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said on Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz. It was not immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the US. The turmoil in the strait has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the US and Iran to
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
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