Thursday, 17 February 2005By Anil Ekmecic
BEIJING - South Korea and China have urged patience with North Korea, stressing their commitment to
six-party talks on its nuclear programme, as diplomats arrived in Beijing to try to get the process back on track.
North Korea last week dealt a blow to the complicated diplomatic effort to persuade it to abandon its atomic
programme, declaring for the first time that it had nuclear weapons and was withdrawing indefinitely from the talks.
South Korea's delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, flew to Beijing on Thursday on a
previously scheduled two-day visit. He was scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei.
"We can't expect to resolve this in a short period of time. We should take a long-term perspective, and we will
resolve it in a calm manner," Song told reporters on Thursday.
The recently named top U.S. nuclear negotiator for the Beijing talks, ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill,
also arrived for a hastily arranged visit. U.S. officials said he was expected to join Song's talks.
"Just having some initial consultation, that's it," he told reporters.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said Hill would meet Wu as well as Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing.
He said Ning Fukui, China's special envoy for Korean nuclear issues, was also likely to attend the meetings.
The diplomatic flurry precedes a trip to North Korea on February 19 by senior Chinese Communist party official
Wang Jiarui -- an apparent attempt to salvage the talks, which also include long-time North Korean ally Russia and
neighbouring Japan.
China is North Korea's main benefactor and U.S. officials, while grateful to Beijing for having coaxed the reclusive
country to the negotiating table three times, have increasingly faulted the Chinese privately for failing to exert even
more influence.
Kong said China remained committed to the six-party process and pressuring North Korea was not the answer.
"We believe this kind of tactic will not create a resolution but instead raise tensions," he told a regular news briefing.
"Complication of the issue will complicate the safety and security of the region."
The six countries have met three times in Beijing. A fourth round of talks planned for September 2004 never
materialised, with Pyongyang saying Washington must first drop its hostile policy towards the North.
South Korea's ambassador to China, Kim Ha-joong, said Beijing's influence on the North was far greater than
believed.
"The question is whether China will use the card or not," Kim was quoted as saying in Seoul, referring to Chinese
leverage based largely on its role as the main supplier of goods to its impoverished neighbour.
All China needed to do was to shut down a few of the 15 or so highways into the North "for maintenance" for
Pyongyang to feel the heat, Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying.
Kong said the central issue was not China's leverage but distrust between North Korea, also called the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), and the United States.
"Both China and the ROK (South Korea) will take practical measures to resume the six-party talks, but the efforts of
China and the ROK are not enough. We believe the most important are the efforts of the U.S. and DPRK," he said.
South Korea, which has maintained a two-track approach to the North through a bilateral engagement policy along
with the multilateral nuclear diplomacy, is considering a policy change where it would more closely link its economic
and agricultural aid to the North's progress on the nuclear issue.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told reporters on Wednesday that humanitarian aid would continue, but
Seoul had yet to make a decision on a North Korean request for 500,000 tonnes of fertiliser.
Both Japan and China also played down remarks by CIA Director Porter Goss on the threat of North Korea's ballistic
missiles, with Hiroyuki Hosoda, Japan's top government spokesman, saying Tokyo did not believe Pyongyang would
launch a missile soon.
Kong said China would not comment on "speculative remarks".
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Thursday, 17 February 2005
Reuters via Swissinfo
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