China sends two envoys to N Korea
China’s president Hu Jintao appears to have sent a special envoy to North Korea, a former South Korean politician said today, amid speculation that the North might conduct another nuclear test.
China’s state councillor Tang Jiaxuan and its nuclear envoy Wu Dawei have left China and probably went to Pyongyang yesterday or early today, Jang Sung-min said, citing diplomatic officials in Beijing.
“Both of the men are out of China” and apparently went to North Korea, Jang quoted the official as saying.
A North Korean official in Beijing confirmed that Tang visited North Korea as Hu’s special envoy, the South’s Yonhap news agency said, without naming the official.
An official at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing said he didn’t have information about the matter.
The trip could be an effort by China to stop its hard-line communist ally from conducting a second nuclear test.
China is the impoverished North’s last remaining ally and key aid donor, but it remains unclear whether Beijing will succeed in dissuading Pyongyang from testing anther nuclear device, given their soured relations following Beijing’s support of the UN resolution.
However, China had succeeded in blocking an even tougher resolution pushed by the US and Japan.
A second test was not ruled out by Ri Gun, director-general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s American affairs bureau, in an interview with ABC News in Pyongyang that was broadcast Wednesday.
When asked by ABC about a possible additional test, Ri said, “Even if there’s a nuclear test, that is natural.” He did not give details.
Jang said the Chinese special envoy could be poised to convey any North Korean message to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who plans to visit Beijing on Friday after a stop in Seoul.
Jang, a former ruling party lawmaker, currently heads a policy think tank in Seoul and has been active in Northeast Asian affairs.
Jang was sceptical that Chinese diplomatic efforts will bring about a dramatic breakthrough.
“It will be difficult to hear any positive message from North Korea unless Tang visited Pyongyang with a message that Washington was willing to meet the North and discuss its financial restrictions on the North,” he said.
Tang recently met US president George Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss North Korea’s nuclear situation.
A spokesman for the North’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that his country will closely follow the US attitude in the future and take corresponding measures – a statement widely seen as a thinly veiled threat to detonate a second atomic bomb unless the US lifts financial sanctions on the North.
The North vowed not to return to six-country talks on its nuclear weapons program until the US lifts the financial restrictions imposed on the North for its alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.
“We will decide whether to conduct another nuclear test after seeing the US response. It is not important when we conduct a test as we can carry it out at anytime,” Jang quoted a senior North Korean official in Beijing as saying.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice urged the swift and effective implementation of sanctions against North Korea today, arguing in Tokyo, Japan, that the United States had no desire to escalate the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear test.
Rice also reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to the defence of Japan, its top ally in the region and home to 50,000 US troops.
North Korea’s nuclear test last week has raised concerns of an arms race in the region.
“The United States has no desire to escalate this crisis. We would like to see it de-escalate,” Rice said in a joint news conference with Japanese foreign minister Taro Aso.
“This is not a blockade or a quarantine,” she added, referring to the UN sanctions.
