The crisis over North Korea\u2019s weapons programs must be resolved through talks, not war, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, while U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the danger of \u201csleepwalking\u201d into conflict.<\/p>\n
Xi made his comments to visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered on Tuesday to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions. But the White House said on Wednesday that no negotiations could be held until North Korea improved its behaviour.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tillerson\u2019s offer of direct contacts with North Korea was \u201ca very good signal\u201d while warning that any U.S. strike on the country would have catastrophic consequences. Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed North Korea during a phone call, the White House and Kremlin said in separate statements. The two leaders talked about \u201cworking together to resolve the very dangerous situation,\u201d the White House said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Tillerson is to attend a UN Security Council ministerial meeting on North Korea in New York on Friday at which he plans to urge countries to maintain a US-led campaign to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its weapons programs through sanctions. North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29, which it said could put all of the United States within range, in defiance of international pressure and U.N. sanctions.<\/p>\n
The United States has said all options were on the table in dealing with North Korea, including military action. Meeting in Beijing\u2019s Great Hall of the People, Xi told Moon the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula must be stuck to, and war and chaos cannot be allowed, Chinese state media said. \u201cThe peninsula issue must, in the end, be resolved via dialogue and consultation,\u201d Xi was cited as saying. China and South Korea have an important shared interest in maintaining peace, and China was willing to work with South Korea to promote talks and support North and South to improve relations, Xi said. South Korea\u2019s Yonhap news agency said Xi and Moon agreed the war on the peninsula would not be tolerated and they would cooperate in applying sanctions and pressure on North Korea. The apparently warm tone of their talks followed nearly a year of tense relations between the two countries.<\/p>\n
China has been furious about the deployment of the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defence anti-missile system in South Korea, saying its powerful radar can see far into China. China and South Korea agreed in October to normalise exchanges and move past the dispute, which froze trade and business exchanges.<\/p>\n
Xi reiterated China\u2019s position on THAAD and said he hoped South Korea would continue to \u201cappropriately handle\u201d the issue. Guterres, speaking to reporters in Tokyo after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said Security Council resolutions on North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile programmes must be fully implemented by Pyongyang and other countries. He said he expected Friday\u2019s Security Council meeting would deliver a strong expression of unity and the need for diplomacy to resolve the issue. \u201cThe worst possible thing that could happen is for us all to sleepwalk into a war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said after meeting Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono in London on Thursday that military options in North Korea did not look attractive and the best way forward was to intensify the economic pressure. Both China and Russia have welcomed Tillerson\u2019s apparent overture. Putin said a U.S. strike on North Korea would have catastrophic consequences and that he hoped to work with Washington eventually to resolve the crisis. Putin told a news conference that Russia did not accept North Korea\u2019s nuclear status, but some U.S. actions had provoked North Korea. \u201cWe believe the two sides should now stop aggravating the situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
North Korea justifies its weapons programmes as the necessary defence against US plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention. North Korea\u2019s state news agency KCNA said Trump was taking a big step towards nuclear war in seeking a naval blockade and North Korea would take \u201cmerciless self-defence\u201d measures if the United States tried to impose one. North Korea would regard a naval blockade as \u201can act of war\u201d and a \u201cwanton violation\u201d of its sovereignty and dignity, the agency cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying, while reiterating that North Korea was a responsible nuclear power that would fulfil its non-proliferation commitments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The crisis over North Korea\u2019s weapons programs must be resolved through talks, not war, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, while U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the danger of \u201csleepwalking\u201d into conflict. Xi made his comments to visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered on Tuesday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13605,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13606,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604\/revisions\/13606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}