BEIJING: The United States said yesterday that China had agreed to work together to rid North Korea of its nuclear capability by peaceful means, but Beijing made no specific commitment in public to pressure its long-time ally to change its ways.
US Secretary of State John Kerry met China’s top leaders in a bid to persuade them to push reclusive North Korea, whose main diplomatic supporter is Beijing, to scale back its belligerence and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.
Kerry wants to see China take a more active stance towards North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States and South Korea.
Kerry and China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, said both countries supported the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula.
“We are able, the United States and China, to underscore our joint commitment to the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner,” Kerry told reporters, sitting next to Yang at a state guest house in western Beijing.
But North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons, which it described on Friday as its “treasured” guarantor of security.
Yang said China’s stance on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula was clear and consistent, repeating phrasing used by the Foreign Ministry since the crisis began.
“We maintain that the issue should be handled and resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation. To properly address the Korea nuclear issue serves the common interests of all parties. It is also the shared responsibility of all parties,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.
“China will work with other relevant parties, including the United States, to play a constructive role in promoting the six-party talks and balanced implementation of the goals set out in the Sept. 19 joint statement of 2005.”
North Korean television made no mention of Kerry’s visit and devoted most of its reports to preparations for tomorrow’s celebrations marking the birth date of state founder Kim Il-Sung.
But Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party’s newspaper, issued a fresh denunciation of joint US-South Korean military exercises, saying: “If the enemies dare provoke (North Korea) while going reckless, it will immediately blow them up with an annihilating strike with the use of powerful nuclear means.”
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting a government source, said North Korea had not moved any of its mobile missile launchers for the past two days after media reports that as many as five missiles had been moved into place on the country’s east coast.
It said this suggested no missile launches were imminent.
Meanwhile, China and the US, which are embroiled in a bitter dispute over hacking, have agreed to set up a cybersecurity working group, Kerry said.
“All of us, every nation, has an interest in protecting its people, protecting its rights, protecting its infrastructure,” he told reporters on a visit to Beijing.
“Cybersecurity affects everybody,” he said. “It affects airplanes in the sky, trains on their tracks, it affects the flow of water through dams, it affects transportation networks, power plants, it affects the financial sector, banks, financial transactions.
“So we are going to work immediately on an accelerated basis on cyber.”
AFP
