Recent comments by North Korea were “very unhelpful,” US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said in Jakarta yesterday after Pyongyang announced it was suspending all dialogue with the South.
“Those comments were in many cases very inappropriate and very unhelpful to the situation. The DPRK [North Korea] needs to be reaching out to its neighbors,” Hill told reporters.
North Korea said on Thursday it was suspending all dialogue with the South and closing the border to Seoul officials, its toughest action in a week of growing cross-border tensions.
Hill said it was not clear how the deteriorating relations between the two neighbors would affect the progress of six-nation disarmament talks, which have reached an impasse over the North’s promised declaration of all its nuclear activities.
“We have not seen how that six-party process is affected by those comments … I have not met with any DPRK representatives since Geneva and so we’ll have to see whether those comments affect it or not,” he said.
“I’m not in a position really to tell you no they don’t, but nor am I in a position to say that they are affecting it,” Hill said.
He said the US was “obviously looking to wrap up the declaration very soon” and that he may hold talks with his North Korean counterpart after a planned visit to East Timor tomorrow.
“If there is a meeting with them [the North Koreans], it will not be before I go to East Timor … maybe after that visit we’ll see what the schedule is,” he said.
Hill said on Wednesday that differences over the North’s promised nuclear declaration have narrowed, but that time was pressing.
In related news, North Korea has asked China to provide massive food aid for its hungry people amid a flare-up in tensions with former major donor, Seoul’s Hankyoreh newspaper said yesterday.
“This means the North won’t look to the South for food aid, at least for a while,” it quoted a diplomatic source as saying. “China has not yet responded to this request.”
A leading analyst also said the North’s leader was likely to turn to his traditional ally.
“Following the April 18-19 US-South Korea summit, Kim Jong-il is likely to visit China to strengthen their traditional alliance as ‘brotherly neighbors’ and request massive food aid,” professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies said.
In recent years, the North has received around 400,000 tonnes of rice and about 300,000 tonnes of fertilizer a year from the prosperous South.
Its party newspaper Rodong Sinmun, in an article blasting South Korean President Lee Myung-bak as a traitor and US sycophant, said this week it no longer needed Seoul’s help.
“The DPRK will be able to live as well as it wishes without any help from the South, as it did in the past,” it said.
Seoul officials say the North has made no request for rice or fertilizer this year, despite its severe food shortage. Any such request would be considered depending on the overall situation, said Kim Jung-soo, director general of the Unification Ministry’s humanitarian cooperation bureau.
SEPARATE: The MAC rebutted Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is China’s province, asserting that UN Resolution 2758 neither mentions Taiwan nor grants the PRC authority over it The “status quo” of democratic Taiwan and autocratic China not belonging to each other has long been recognized by the international community, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday in its rebuttal of Beijing’s claim that Taiwan can only be represented in the UN as “Taiwan, Province of China.” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday at a news conference of the third session at the 14th National People’s Congress said that Taiwan can only be referred to as “Taiwan, Province of China” at the UN. Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, which is not only history but
NATIONAL SECURITY: The Chinese influencer shared multiple videos on social media in which she claimed Taiwan is a part of China and supported its annexation Freedom of speech does not allow comments by Chinese residents in Taiwan that compromise national security or social stability, the nation’s top officials said yesterday, after the National Immigration Agency (NIA) revoked the residency permit of a Chinese influencer who published videos advocating China annexing Taiwan by force. Taiwan welcomes all foreigners to settle here and make families so long as they “love the land and people of Taiwan,” Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) told lawmakers during a plenary session at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei. The public power of the government must be asserted when necessary and the Ministry of
CROSSED A LINE: While entertainers working in China have made pro-China statements before, this time it seriously affected the nation’s security and interests, a source said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) late on Saturday night condemned the comments of Taiwanese entertainers who reposted Chinese statements denigrating Taiwan’s sovereignty. The nation’s cross-strait affairs authority issued the statement after several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑), Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜) and Michelle Chen (陳妍希), on Friday and Saturday shared on their respective Sina Weibo (微博) accounts a post by state broadcaster China Central Television. The post showed an image of a map of Taiwan along with the five stars of the Chinese flag, and the message: “Taiwan is never a country. It never was and never will be.” The post followed remarks
Proposed amendments would forbid the use of all personal electronic devices during school hours in high schools and below, starting from the next school year in August, the Ministry of Education said on Monday. The Regulations on the Use of Mobile Devices at Educational Facilities up to High Schools (高級中等以下學校校園行動載具使用原則) state that mobile devices — defined as mobile phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches or other wearables — should be turned off at school. The changes would stipulate that use of such devices during class is forbidden, and the devices should be handed to a teacher or the school for safekeeping. The amendments also say
RSS