A top Chinese Communist Party official was in North Korea's capital Sunday seeking to draw Pyongyang back into six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons program after the North reportedly rejected further negotiations.
The visit by the Chinese official, Wang Jiarui, came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met with their Japanese counterparts and urged North Korea to rejoin the stalled negotiations. Rice called the six-party talks "the best way to end nuclear programs and the only way for North Korea to achieve better relations."
Chinese state media said Wang "exchanged views ... on international and regional issues" with North Korea's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam.
China's effort to persuade North Korea to rejoin negotiations has taken on greater urgency since Pyongyang's unconfirmed declaration earlier this month that it has become a nuclear power. Beijing is a key source of food and energy aid to the impoverished North but fears that cutting off supplies might risk instability and send a flood of refugees across the border into China.
China gets to be the peacemaker and to prove its worth to the west in their role as broker in the North Korean negotiations. I'm not convinced China wants North Korea to disarm. As I've said twice before, I think North Korea provides a stage to act out two plays that are in the interests of China. China plays an important role in the talks with North Korea. It plays the part of a regional power brokering for peace. This serves China by building a reputation as a partner and new market for the world's goods. Secondly, North Korea threatens the US and Japan, distracting both countries from Chinese moves to emerge as a world power and covering its intentions to further its own interests, such as oil and Taiwan. North Korea serves as a wildcard for China. I don't expect to see North Korea disarming anytime soon. It's value as an ally in any open conflict in the Asia Pacific is too important to China's imperialist intentions.
Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Allies Seek Peace, Stability in East Asia
Praising Japan as a steadfast ally, Rice said Friday that maintaining peace in the Asia Pacific region was a shared goal and that she looked forward to a joint effort with Japan to restrain China from using force against Taiwan. That mutual goal reflects a ``very deep and broad relationship'' between Washington and Tokyo, she said.
Until now, Japan mostly has left it to the United States to deal with China's wrath and threats to use force against Taiwan. Rice, in a news conference with visiting Foreign Minister Bernard Bot of The Netherlands, reiterated the long-standing U.S. admonition to China. ``There should be no attempt to change the status quo unilaterally,'' she said.
The U.S. security alliance with Japan has formed the backbone of U.S. foreign policy in Asia, but the two allies have long disagreed about how to deal with China's territorial claim over Taiwan. Washington has indicated it would intervene if China tried to take Taiwan by force. A cautious Japan has traditionally sought to avoid involvement.
Japan has been reluctant to re-enter the regional stage as a military power. The distablizing influence of North Korea and China's moves to grab potential oil producing areas in the South China Sea where Japan already has active oil platforms and recently occupied Senkaku Islands with 50,000 troops, just off the coast of Taiwan. Japan clearly recognizes its interests in a alliance with Taiwan and the US. This situation promises to heat up over the next decade as China and Japan arm militarily.
North Korea | Taiwan
China Steps Up Efforts on Nuclear Talks
Feb 20, 10:05 AM (ET)
By STEPHANIE HOO
BEIJING (AP) - A top Chinese Communist Party official was in North Korea's capital Sunday seeking to draw Pyongyang back into six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons program after the North reportedly rejected further negotiations.
The visit by the Chinese official, Wang Jiarui, came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met with their Japanese counterparts and urged North Korea to rejoin the stalled negotiations. Rice called the six-party talks "the best way to end nuclear programs and the only way for North Korea to achieve better relations."
Chinese state media said Wang "exchanged views ... on international and regional issues" with North Korea's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam.
China's effort to persuade North Korea to rejoin negotiations has taken on greater urgency since Pyongyang's unconfirmed declaration earlier this month that it has become a nuclear power. Beijing is a key source of food and energy aid to the impoverished North but fears that cutting off supplies might risk instability and send a flood of refugees across the border into China.
Wang, who arrived in Pyongyang Saturday for a four-day visit, also planned to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, according to South Korea's Munhwa Ilbo newspaper.
China's state news agency, Xinhua, reported Saturday that the North had reiterated its Feb. 10 decision to indefinitely suspend participation in six-party talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
During three rounds of talks in Beijing since late 2002, North Korea has demanded more aid and a peace treaty with Washington in exchange for abandoning nuclear development.
North Korea had also sought one-on-one talks with Washington but withdrew that offer on Saturday, citing what it called the United States' persistent attempts to topple the communist regime, Xinhua said.
In Washington, Japan's foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, said he hoped China "will serve the role not just as a mere moderator, but also as a player actively at work on the North Koreans" to rejoin the talks.
In response, North Korea criticized Japan's new defense guidelines, which singled out North Korean missiles as a threat and allowed Japan to pursue a missile defense program with Washington. According to Pyongyang, the guidelines adopted in December were a sign that Tokyo has joined "U.S. vicious hostile policy" toward its communist state.
U.S. naval vessels, including a nuclear-powered submarine, joined South Korean ships in a weeklong exercise on South Korean waters off the east coast, according to a news report Sunday.
South Korea's navy said Sunday the anti-submarine exercise took place Feb. 12-18 in the East Sea.
U.S. military officials could not immediately confirm the report, but South Korea's Yonhap news agency said a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine and other U.S. vessels joined the exercise.
Fears of North Korean submarines run high in South Korea.
In 1996, South Korea launched a massive military operation to hunt down 26 North Korean commandoes and crew who came ashore when their submarine ran aground on the South's east coast. All but two of the intruders were either killed or found dead. Thirteen South Koreans also were killed.
South Korea captured a North Korean spy submarine entangled in fishing nets off its east coast in 1998. Nine North Korean soldiers and crew were found inside, believed killed in a murder-suicide to avoid capture.
North Korea routinely condemns joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea, calling them preparations to invade the communist state.
Allies Seek Peace, Stability in East Asia
Saturday February 19, 2005 11:16 AM
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Shared concern about China and its threat to use force against Taiwan are drawing Japan and the United States closer in their determination to maintain peace and stability in East Asia.
While the Bush administration says it supports China's emergence as an economic power in the region and the world, the overriding U.S. message to Beijing is, as State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday: ``Play by the rules.''
Increasingly, Japan is growing bolder in publicly seconding that view.
During talks Saturday in Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono are expected to make strong statements in support of ensuring security in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula.
They also were expected to renew demands that North Korea halt development of nuclear weapons while exploring strategy to persuade Pyongyang to drop its opposition to resuming negotiations with China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Rice and the two Japanese ministers are all new to their jobs, so it is an occasion for wide-ranging discussions, said Hatsuhisa Takashima, the Japanese foreign ministry spokesman.
In an interview Friday, he said that based on ``our long-standing alliance'' the two sides were seeking a common strategy to deal with terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the continuing problem of conventional weapons.
Reflecting growing U.S. concern about China's aims, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith said Thursday: ``For a country like China, the fundamental choice is whether it wishes to join the group of advanced economies whose relationships are governed by the 'rules of the road' of the international state system.''
Feith, who helps formulate Pentagon policy, said that of all the countries growing in power, China is the one most likely to have the greatest effect on international relations in the years ahead.
When President Bush visits Europe next week, he will try - in what is likely to be a futile effort - to persuade the European Union to leave in place a 15-year-old arms embargo on China.
``The president has real concerns about it,'' national security adviser Stephen Hadley said Thursday.
As for China's behavior, Hadley said, ``We all have an interest in China continuing to move in the direction of democracy and freedom, and being a constructive member of the international community.''
The Europeans, he said, share U.S. concerns about human rights in China.
In East Asia, Japan is showing a growing inclination to stand with the United States on self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province that must be reabsorbed by the mainland. It split with Beijing amid civil war in 1949.
Praising Japan as a steadfast ally, Rice said Friday that maintaining peace in the Asia Pacific region was a shared goal and that she looked forward to a joint effort with Japan to restrain China from using force against Taiwan.
That mutual goal reflects a ``very deep and broad relationship'' between Washington and Tokyo, she said.
Until now, Japan mostly has left it to the United States to deal with China's wrath and threats to use force against Taiwan.
Rice, in a news conference with visiting Foreign Minister Bernard Bot of The Netherlands, reiterated the long-standing U.S. admonition to China.
``There should be no attempt to change the status quo unilaterally,'' she said.
The U.S. security alliance with Japan has formed the backbone of U.S. foreign policy in Asia, but the two allies have long disagreed about how to deal with China's territorial claim over Taiwan.
Washington has indicated it would intervene if China tried to take Taiwan by force. A cautious Japan has traditionally sought to avoid involvement.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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