The top diplomats for China, South Korea and Japan are to meet in Tokyo this weekend for talks, Seoul said yesterday, as the neighbors move to bolster regional ties.
South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Tae-yul and his Japanese and Chinese counterparts, Iwaya Takeshi and Wang Yi (王毅), are to “exchange comprehensive views ... for the development of trilateral cooperation,” Seoul’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The meeting in Tokyo on Saturday will be the 11th trilateral ministerial meeting, the statement said, with the last such meeting held in November 2023 in the South Korean port city of Busan.
Photo: AFP
The countries are also to hold bilateral talks on the sidelines of the three-way summit, Seoul added.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK said the meeting was “expected to discuss concrete cooperation in a wide range of areas, such as people-to-people exchanges, economic cooperation and measures to combat the falling birthrate.”
The top diplomats were also set “to agree to coordinate the holding of a summit meeting of the three countries by the end of the year.”
NHK said Tokyo also aims to resolve some outstanding bilateral issues, “ such as China’s measures to suspend imports of Japanese fisheries products.”
In May last year, the leaders of the three countries held a rare summit in Seoul — the first such high level talks in five years — at which they agreed to deepen trade ties.
The three countries also reaffirmed their commitment to the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” — a reference to nuclear-armed North Korea.
Seoul and Tokyo typically take a stronger line against Pyongyang than does China, which remains one of North Korea’s most important allies and economic benefactors, despite leader Kim Jong-un’s recent moves to bolster ties with historic ally Russia.
Beijing has previously resisted condemning Pyongyang for its weapons tests, instead criticizing joint US-South Korea drills for raising tension.
Seoul and Washington accuse Pyongyang of sending thousands of North Korean soldiers to help Russia fight its war against Ukraine, in return for technical assistance from Moscow for its banned weapons programs.
Experts say any moves by Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing to ramp up trilateral cooperation and boost economic ties augers well for future agreements on more difficult topics like Kim’s nuclear weapons.
The announcement comes as South Korea awaits a Constitutional Court’s ruling on whether to remove President Yoon Suk-yeol from office over his botched martial law declaration in December.
While in office, Yoon has pushed for closer ties with Japan, attempting to bury the historical hatchet to present a united trilateral front with the US against North Korea’s growing military provocations.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS