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| Monday, 14 February 2005 |
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China, Russia push N.Korea to return to nuclear talks SEOUL, Sunday (AFP) North Korea on Sunday came under increasing pressure from traditional allies China and Russia to return to multi-party negotiations on scrapping its nuclear weapons programme. The diplomatic offensive came as the United States said the six-way talks were the only appropriate forum for negotiations and South Korea said it would urge Beijing to use its influence with Pyongyang to bring the North back in. The isolated Stalinist regime on Thursday dramatically announced it had nuclear weapons and was dropping out of the multilateral talks, accusing the United States of planning to invade. China at the weekend said it would maintain the pressure on Pyongyang, with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing telling US counterpart Condoleezza Rice that Beijing would keep working to jump-start the six-way talks. "(China) will strive to make the situation develop in a positive direction so that the six-party talks could be resumed as soon as possible," Li was cited by Xinhua news agency as saying in the telephone talks Saturday. Russia, traditionally considered sympathetic to the North, issued an unusually strongly-worded statement that Pyongyang would have made the "wrong choice" if it decided to quit the six-nation nuclear talks. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said at a meeting of security experts in the German city of Munich Saturday: "If the information in question proves accurate, I would say that North Korea has made the wrong choice." "I believe we should do all we can to keep that state in the treaty framework." |
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