China has stepped up efforts to break the deadlock on the Korean
Peninsula nuclear issue as senior Chinese negotiators and their
foreign counterparts met yesterday to discuss Pyongyang's missile
tests.
State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan said China has been committed to
preserving peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, making it
nuclear-free and pushing forward with the six-party talks.
"We will continue to make constructive efforts and maintain
close contact with all sides" on the nuclear issue, he told US
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill during a one-hour
meeting.
Hill said his country attaches importance to the six-party talks
and is willing to settle the problems through diplomacy.
Washington hopes Pyongyang "can return to the framework of the
six-party talks as soon as possible," he told reporters.
The US has achieved "very good understanding" with China on the
current situation, and hopes to work with China to deal with it, he
said.
Hill, who is also chief US envoy for the six-party talks,
arrived in Beijing on Friday morning after Wednesday's test-firing
of seven missiles by North Korea.
Hill also talked to Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei and met with
Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in the morning.
He concluded his brief stay in Beijing in the afternoon and
headed to Seoul.
Kenichiro Sasae, Japan's chief negotiator to the six-party
talks, also met Wu in the afternoon.
"It is important that China takes an appropriate response
concerning this (missile test) issue," Sasae told reporters.
The meetings came only hours after President Hu Jintao and US President George W. Bush spoke
by phone about the missile launches.
While Bush called for a coordinated response to Pyongyang, Hu
urged calm and restraint.
Wu, China's top negotiator to the six-party talks, will
accompany Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on a visit to Pyongyang next week,
which is expected to help defuse the missile crisis.
China and Russia have insisted on negotiating without threats of
punishment. After a second day of the UN Security Council emergency
meeting on Thursday in New York, China and Russia refused to back a
Japan-sponsored resolution and said they preferred a milder
statement with no mention of sanctions.
But Japan and the US are seeking a toughly worded Security
Council condemnation.
Hill told reporters on Friday afternoon that he did not discuss
sanctions in talks with China.
Pyongyang lashed out at Tokyo yesterday for imposing sanctions
and threatened "stronger actions" against Japan if its sanctions
were not lifted.
Japan has banned a North Korean ferry from entering its ports
for six months as part of a package of initial sanctions.
"This may force us to take stronger physical actions," Kyodo
News Service quoted Song Il-ho, the North Korean ambassador in
charge of diplomatic normalization talks with Japan, as saying.
The North Korean councilor at the UN mission in Geneva, Choe
Myong-nam, told South Korea's Yonhap News Agency that Wednesday's
volley of missiles was "not an attack on someone" and defended
Pyongyang's right to such launches.
"From an international point of view, it is not fair to say who
can do one thing and who cannot," Choe said. "The same applies to
possessing nuclear weapons."
South Korea will delay food and fertilizer shipments to the
North until the missile crisis is resolved, Yonhap reported
yesterday.
"We will hold off" on plans to send 100,000 tons of fertilizer
to the North, Yonhap quoted a high-level government official as
saying.
"In addition, we will hold off on providing 500,000 tons of
rice," said the official, who requested anonymity. "This will
continue until there is an exit out of the missile problem."
South Korea, however, announced it would hold ministerial talks
with the North as scheduled next week, the first high-level contact
with Pyongyang since the July 4 tests.
(China Daily July 8, 2006)