|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
North Korea: Chinese Officials Meet With Pyongyang Envoy Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi met North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun yesterday to discuss the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula, CNN.com reported (see GSN, Feb. 18). “Both sides had a deep and broad discussion on the nuclear issue in North Korea, and exchanged views on the issue. Each side also said they want to see the issue resolved through peaceful means and through dialogue,” according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue. Chinese officials would not say if the officials discussed Pyongyang’s recent threat to pull out of the 1953 Armistice Agreement (Lisa Weaver, CNN.com, Feb. 18). A South Korean military official said that the North Korean threat was not a new development, Agence France-Presse reported today. “North Korea said in 1994 they were no longer bound by the Armistice Agreement,” the official said. Pyongyang again called for a nonaggression treaty with Washington yesterday, and urged the United States to engage in direct negotiations. “The U.S. is insisting on its strange assertion that it cannot respond to the D.P.R.K. (North Korea)-U.S. talks as they mean a sort of reward for the D.P.R.K. despite the unanimous world public opinion that D.P.R.K.-U.S. direct talks should take place to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue. This is an illogical far-fetched assertion,” said a statement from the Korean Central News Agency. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Beijing “shortly” to discuss the crisis, Zhang said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo.com, Feb. 19). South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said that Japan and South Korea could be forced to build their own nuclear capacity if North Korea continues its weapons development. “If North Korea gets nuclear weapons, the stance of Japan and our country toward nuclear weapons would change,” Kim said (Hamish McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 19). Kim said, however, that the current standoff will probably not end in war. “I believe the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula is slight — in fact, nonexistent,” he said yesterday (Cho/Struck, Washington Post, Feb. 19).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
