The US welcomed the prospect of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting next week, as momentum appeared to gather for seizing the opportunity.
Japan and China agreed on Friday that all six nations party to the talks should meet at the regional forum in Kuala Lumpur, and China indicated it opposed holding talks without Pyongyang, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.
The US and South Korea had shown interest in holding five-way talks if North Korea refused to return to the negotiating table.
But US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said on Friday she would be "very happy" to attend six-party talks in Kuala Lumpur.
Speaking to a group of Asian journalists, Rice stressed that any nuclear negotiations with North Korea must be within the six-party framework of the two Koreas, Japan, the US, China and Russia.
"If the North Koreans want to come to six-party talks at any level, I think it would be fine, but we need to do it at six parties," the secretary of state said when asked if she would be willing to meet with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun, who was expected to attend the ASEAN Regional Forum on Friday.
"But if we could have a six-party meeting in Kuala Lumpur, I would be very happy to attend," she said.
Rice defended the US' insistence on a six-party framework, saying last week's UN Security Council resolution criticizing Pyongyang's test launches showed "that this is a problem that North Korea has with the entire international community."
North Korea has shunned the six-way talks since November to protest US financial sanctions on a Macau bank accused of money laundering on its behalf.
Japan and South Korea have agreed to use the regional security forum, organized by the ASEAN, to press for North Korea's return to six-nation talks.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) used a phone conversation on Friday with his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo-hyun, to call for new six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Hu urged "calm and restraint" as regional tensions remained high over Pyongyang's July 5 missile launches, it said.
Rice called North Korea "a completely irresponsible state and dangerous" for its missile tests.
"When you look at them testing missiles, not telling anybody they're firing them in all different directions, and they're saying that they have a nuclear weapons capability ... that they could make those together is very dangerous," she said.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS