South Korea hopes to launch talks with the US, China and North Korea on a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War when progress becomes visible in disabling Pyongyang's nuclear facilities, Seoul's top diplomat said yesterday.
The remark by South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon means that the four-nation peace talks could start in a couple of months, as North Korea is supposed to disable its nuclear facilities by year's end.
Song also said that US troops, stationed in South Korea to deter threats from the North, should keep their presence here even after a peace treaty is signed.
"The government is in talks with directly related countries with the aim of opening negotiations on a peace regime at a time when progress is visible in North Korea's nuclear disablement," Song told a security forum in Seoul.
Talk of replacing the 1950-1953 Korean War armistice with a peace treaty gained significant momentum this month as the two Koreas agreed at a summit to seek to organize a summit of parties to the ceasefire to discuss the issue.
The Korean War armistice involved the US, China and North Korea. South Korea never signed it, as it believed a truce would leave the Korean peninsula divided. Seoul officials said, however, that there is no objection from the three countries to the South getting involved in a peace treaty.
Finalizing a peace treaty is expected to be a lengthy process, as it depends on North Korea's nuclear dismantlement.
"The South and the North will play the leading role in the Korean peninsula peace regime that will be established, as they are the ones who will have to uphold it," Song said. "The US and China will play roles that adequately reflect their status in forming the 1953 armistice."
The US has about 28,000 soldiers in South Korea to support the country's some 670,000 troops. North Korea has a 1.2 million-strong military, most of whom are stationed near the heavily fortified border that divides the peninsula.
Washington's ambassador to Tokyo sent US President George W. Bush a cable warning that portions of the pending nuclear deal with North Korea could harm relations with Japan, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
In addition, US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer complained that the deal with Pyongyang was being negotiated by top State Department officials with no knowledge or input from the embassy in Tokyo.
The deal could result in removing North Korea from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism -- a move that could harm ties with Japan, Schieffer wrote.
Although ambassadors rarely send cables directly to the president, Schieffer -- a former ambassador to Australia -- is a long-time friend and former Bush business partner, the Post reported.
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
Outside Havana, a combine belonging to a private Vietnamese company is harvesting rice, directly farming Cuban land — in a first — to help address acute food shortages in the country. The Cuban government has granted Agri VAM, a subsidiary of Vietnam’s Fujinuco Group, 1,000 hectares of arable land in Los Palacios, 118km west of the capital. Vietnam has advised Cuba on rice cultivation in the past, but this is the first time a private firm has done the farming itself. The government approved the move after a 52 percent plunge in overall agricultural production between 2018 and 2023, according to data
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
RSS