South Korea yesterday dashed hopes of an early breakthrough on North Korea's nuclear drive, saying the North seems intent on shunning six-nation talks despite joining top negotiators for a forum here.
Chief negotiators from the six nations are gathering in Tokyo this week for a private security conference at a time when North Korea refuses to return to the formal talks on ending its nuclear ambitions.
But Chun Young-woo, South Korea's chief delegate to the stalled six-nation talks, said: "You had better not expect too much."
"North Korea seems to be toiling a lot over the current situation, but it seems not to be deciding to return to the six-way talks," Chun said after a closed-door workshop attended by his Pyongyang counterpart, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan.
"Under such circumstances, I think it will be difficult to have US-North Korean bilateral consultations," Chun said.
"This kind of unofficial meeting may help in understanding each other's position, but this is not the type of gathering that can produce a breakthrough," Chun said of the five-day conference.
The six-nation talks bogged down in November after the US accused Pyongyang of counterfeiting US dollars and laundering money. The North has denied the charge and demanded the US lift financial sanctions before it returns to the negotiating table.
"The United States knows very well what is necessary to resume the talks," Kim said on his arrival in Japan.
No meeting has been announced so far between Kim and his US counterpart, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill.
Kim held separate bilateral talks on Saturday evening both with South Korea and Japan, which is embroiled in a row with the North over the regime's past abductions of Japanese civilians.
Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, a North Korea expert, said Pyongyang could use the "two-track" conference, involving private and public figures, to "make people feel like giving something to North Korea and asking the United States to be more lenient."
Hideshi Takesada, a professor at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies, expects the North to use the Tokyo conference to try to persuade China, South Korea and Russia that the money-laundering allegations are false.
The stalemate in the talks will be embarrassing for Chinese President Hu Jintao (
"North Korea will be a complicated, hot topic when Hu meets Bush. The six nations want to have some meeting in advance, albeit informally," Keio University law professor Masao Okonogi said. "If the six-nation framework collapses, it may lead to action on the part of the United Nations. That is something the six countries want to avoid."
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS