A prominent US senator met on Friday with North Korea’s nuclear envoy, who promised to live up to commitments made in an agreement last week with the US.
US Senator John Kerry said that the North Korean also made a “profound statement” about wanting a different relationship and not wanting to fight with the US.
Kerry met the envoy, Ri Yong-ho, at an informal security conference in New York, a week after Pyongyang agreed to freeze uranium enrichment and allow in UN inspectors. The North also agreed to a moratorium on long-range missile and nuclear tests.
“They said that they will live by the agreement that they made last week, that we can count on that,” said Kerry, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
In return, the US will provide its first food aid to the impoverished communist nation in three years.
That has contributed to an easing in tensions between the long-term adversaries, but is only a first step toward restarting six-nation disarmament negotiations that the North withdrew from in 2009.
“We have been here before. We have come to these points that have been constructive and something breaks down. We need to try and change that dynamic,” Kerry said.
Despite a recent warming of ties between the US and North Korea, tensions are still running high on the divided Korean Peninsula, and Pyongyang appears cool to Seoul’s offers of dialogue.
Following US-South Korean military exercises this week, the North called for a “sacred war” against the South and held military drills of its own near a disputed sea border. In 2010, two military attacks on South Korea killed 50 of its people.
The New York conference, held informally and behind closed doors, was an opportunity to break the ice. The nuclear envoys of both North and South Korea were among representatives from eight countries taking part, most of them academics and former officials.
While organizers said the discussions were positive and helped build trust, the envoys of the rival Koreas did not hold separate talks.
The US says for its relations with North Korea to fundamentally improve, there must first be an improvement in inter-Korean relations. South Korean Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik on Friday signaled Seoul’s willingness to talk to the North.
“I urge North Korea again to come forward for dialogue as soon as its internal situation stabilizes,” Yu said at a forum in Seoul, referring to the power transition in North Korea from longtime ruler Kim Jong-il, who died in December, to his untested son Kim Jong-un.
The US reassured South Korea that it will not let the recent progress with Pyongyang affect its close relations with Seoul.
“I want to be very clear: Any effort by anyone to drive a wedge between the United States and the Republic of Korea will fail,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said after meeting South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan in Washington.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS