Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, after meeting with
North Korea's top diplomat during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) gathering in the Philippine capital, said the situation on the Korean
Peninsula is critical.
MANILA: A U.S.
push to further isolate North Korea appeared to be reaping some dividends
Sunday as China, Pyongyang's major benefactor, urged its outcast neighbor to
make a "smart decision" and stop conducting missile launches and nuclear
tests.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, after meeting with
North Korea's top diplomat during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) gathering here in the Philippine capital, said the situation on the
Korean Peninsula is critical. He also said, however, that it could be a turning
point for negotiations over North Korea's nuclear proliferation, which led the
U.N. Security Council to impose more sanctions on North Korea and its exports
on Saturday.
"Do not violate the U.N.'s decision or provoke
international society's goodwill by conducting missile launching or nuclear
tests," Wang said after talks with Ri Yong Ho, North Korea's foreign
minister. Wang, however, quickly added, "Of course, we would like to urge
other parties like the U.S. and South Korea to stop increasing tensions."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Manila on
Saturday night in what State Department officials have said will be a concerted
effort to enlist other countries in the campaign to get North Korea to abandon
its missile and nuclear tests. Concern has mounted that North Korea is
developing its missile technology quicker than expected, after tests last month
of missiles that experts said are capable of striking the U.S. mainland,
perhaps as far inland as Chicago.
"Certainly we want to resolve this issue through
negotiations, and this pressure campaign, the sanctions, it's all about trying
to convince the North Koreans that the fast way forward is to come back to the
table and talk," said Susan Thornton, assistant secretary for East Asian
and Pacific affairs.
But Tillerson also has pointedly stated several times
that the United States does not seek regime change or a rapid reunification of
the two Koreas, which have been in a state of suspended hostility since an
armistice was declared in 1953.
On Sunday, he declared the latest U.N. sanctions a
"good outcome." That prompted South Korean Foreign Minister Kang
Kyung-wha to correct him slightly. "It was a very, very good
outcome," she said.
South Korean officials told reporters after the meeting
said that Kang and Tillerson had agreed to pursue the denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula through peaceful measures.
But the diplomatic road ahead is rocky. U.S. officials
rejected Beijing's call for the North to halt its nuclear program in exchange
for the United States and South Korea suspending joint military exercises,
which Pyongyang considers a prelude to an invasion and regime change.
"This kind of moral equivalency that's implied by
the freeze for freeze, which is between the North Koreans shooting off missiles
that are prohibited and our reasonably defensive exercises that we undertake in
our alliance with the South Koreans to protect them from these launches, is not
a reasonable kind of a trade," Thornton said.
Thornton also said that the United States would be
"watchful" to ensure that China did not slip from its adherence to
the new sanctions, which she characterized as the strongest in a generation.
"We want to make sure China is continuing to
implement fully the sanctions regime," she said. "Not this kind of
episodic back and forth that we've seen."
The United States has unsuccessfully lobbied for the 27
members of the ASEAN Regional Forum to suspend North Korea's membership. The
response has been polite but noncommital.
U.S. officials have been adamant there will be no direct
meetings with North Koreans in Manila, even among lower-level officials.
Tillerson met for about an hour with Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov. They smiled amiably and made small talk but ignored a
reporter's question about how the fresh U.S. sanctions against Russia that
President Donald Trump signed last week would affect their talks.
Lavrov told reporters that he believed the United States
would continue a dialogue with Russia despite what both sides have described as
the worst tensions since the Cold War ended.
"We felt the readiness of our U.S. colleagues to
continue dialogue," Lavrov said. "I think there's no alternative to
that."
The ASEAN conference also addressed other issues of
regional concern.
Delegates are working to establish the framework for a
code of conduct in the South China Sea that would reaffirm respect for the
freedom of navigation and overflight, and outline how to arbitrate disputes.
The demands that China stop expanding and reinforcing man-made islands in the
sea, however, have been watered down from a year ago as more pressing demands
have risen to the forefront.
The United States is particularly concerned about
Islamist militants gaining a foothold in the Philippines, after being pushed
out of Syria and Iraq. The Philippine military is fighting militants who claim
to be affiliated with the Islamic State militant group in Marawi City in the
southern part of the country.
Tillerson started the day on a somber note when he
visited the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, where 17,000 American and
Philippine troops who fought in the Pacific during World War II are buried.
After touring the site and walking past large stone
slabs inscribed with the names of more than 36,000 men and women missing in
action in the theater between 1941 and 1945, Tillerson signed a visitors' book,
adding after his signature, "Let us never forget - FREEDOM."
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