North Korea is dragging its feet over restarting six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons program, despite other participating countries' willingness to move ahead as soon as possible, South Korea's top nuclear negotiator said yesterday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, South Korea's chief delegate to the talks, gave the assessment before meeting his Japanese counterpart, Mitoji Yabunaka, in Seoul yesterday to discuss resuming the nuclear negotiations.
A second round of talks -- which involved the US, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia -- ended in Beijing last month without a major breakthrough.
The participants are trying to form a so-called "working group" next month to nail down details before a full third round, which they'd agreed to convene by June.
"All the countries, except North Korea, think that the working group should meet as soon as possible," Lee said. "Once again, the question of when the talks will resume seems to depend on North Korea's attitude."
Lee hoped that Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
Li would be the first Chinese foreign minister to visit the North in five years.
China, one of communist North Korea's last remaining ideological allies, is a key mediator in the nuclear dispute.
The US insists that the North dismantle its nuclear weapons programs completely and verifiably. Pyongyang says it will do so only if the US provides economic aid and security guarantees.
North Korea threatened on Friday to boost its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity," blaming the US for the lack of progress in the nuclear meetings.
It also claimed that joint US-South Korean military exercises, which began on Sunday, were heightening tensions on the Korean peninsula.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian