US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Sunday for full transparency from North Korea over its nuclear weapons program amid reports it was secretly aiding Syria develop an atomic weapons facility.
"There are frankly a lot of questions that remain to be answered and we want to be able to answer questions about all aspects of the North Korean nuclear program," she told reporters with her Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi (
"So that's very important," she said as preparations got underway for a round of talks in Beijing among the US, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas beginning on Thursday aimed at ending the North's nuclear weapons program.
The chief US diplomat and Yang discussed issues linked to the six-party talks, a State Department official said.
Rice did not cite the reported North Korean-Syrian links. If true, they could cast a dark cloud over US policy towards Pyongyang, which US President George W. Bush, weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, has hailed as a success.
US and British newspapers have reported that North Korea was secretly helping Syria to develop a nuclear weapons facility.
Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported that elite Israeli forces seized North Korean nuclear material during a raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israeli warplanes bombed it on Sept. 6.
Quoting well-placed sources, it said on Sunday that the commandos seized the material from a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in northern Syria and added that tests of it in Israel showed it was of North Korean origin.
Sean McCormack, spokesman for the US State Department, declined to comment on the Sunday Times report but said Washington was "very concerned about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction around the globe.
"We don't want to see the world's worst weapons get into the world's worst hands," he told the local Fox television network.
"So, we are definitely on this case," he said.
Reports in the New York Times and Washington Post made similar links between North Korea and Syria based on intelligence data supposedly from Israel.
North Korea has denied the claims and insists it is keeping an earlier pledge not to allow the transfer of nuclear materials.
Despite the apparent nuclear proliferation concerns, Rice noted progress in the six-party talks based on a Feb. 13 agreement under which North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons program in return for energy aid and diplomatic and security guarantees.
Yang said he and Rice "need to work very hard" on various agreements reached between Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Rice and Yang also discussed Iran and climate change.
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
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
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
RSS