US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday led calls for restraint over a Thai-Cambodia border dispute and North Korea signed a non-aggression treaty during annual Asian security talks.
The discussions among foreign ministers from Southeast Asia and key world powers also tackled North Korea’s denuclearization and disaster preparedness after two major tragedies, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and an earthquake in China.
The US, Russia and China were among the nations which participated in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) security meeting.
At the end of the talks, North Korea signed a non-aggression treaty with ASEAN, taking another small step toward normalizing its relations with the outside world.
Rice urged Thailand and Cambodia to resolve their differences peacefully as troops faced off on either side of their border near historic temple ruins.
“It is something that has been a subject of discussion. We are concerned about it and there needs to be a way to resolve it peacefully,” she told reporters.
Some 4,000 Thai and Cambodian soldiers are facing each other over a small patch of land near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, in one of the most dangerous flare-ups of regional tensions in decades.
The dispute was expected to be discussed later yesterday at the UN Security Council after Cambodia called for the world body to help resolve the issue.
Thailand has resisted outside mediation. Crisis talks earlier this week among the 10-member ASEAN failed to break the deadlock between its two members.
Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo, who was chairing the talks, said all 27 ARF members “called for restraint, a speedy resolution and to maintain the status quo.”
He added that Cambodia’s appeal to the Security Council was seen as “premature.”
The forum took place after an unprecedented meeting in Singapore on Wednesday between Rice and her North Korean counterpart in six-party negotiations aimed at ridding the hermit state of its nuclear arsenal.
In their first ever meeting, Rice shook hands twice with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun and called for Pyongyang to agree on a proposed protocol for verifying the dismantling of its nuclear program.
The US has said North Korea remains part of an “axis of evil.”
Foreign ministers from their six-party counterparts China, South Korea, Russia and Japan were also present at the informal meeting, the highest-level gathering of the group since the nuclear dialog began in 2003.
“I don’t think the North Koreans left with any illusions about the fact that the ball is in their court and that everybody believes that they have got to respond and respond positively on verification,” Rice said yesterday.
Officials and analysts said North Korea’s signing of the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia was a fresh signal of its desire to be seen as a normal member of the international community.
“Every little step that we take towards encouraging North Korea to abide by international norms is a step in a positive direction,” said Andrew Tan, spokesman for the ASEAN meetings.
Disaster preparedness has also risen high on the regional agenda after Cyclone Nargis struck military-ruled Myanmar and the earthquake in southwest China together left more than 200,000 people dead or missing in May.
ASEAN was criticized for failing to pressure Myanmar to open its borders to foreign relief workers in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, but won praise by eventually leading a joint international aid effort.
The security forum agreed on military exercises aimed at forging a regional task force to deal with calamities and “even having designated forces in standby readiness,” Yeo said.
“It makes a lot of sense to conduct such exercises. You don’t want to be working together for the first time when there are natural disasters,” Yeo told a press conference at the end of the talks.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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