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China today offered its support for further bilateral meetings between North Korea and the United States amid a flurry of trips by nuclear negotiators aimed at restarting the halted six-party talks, Agence France-Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 22).
Direct discussions between Pyongyang and Washington "will be conducive to the early resumption of the six-party talks and ensure the peace and stability of northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.
"We encourage multilateral and bilateral meetings and dialogue ... on this issue, China adopts a supportive and positive attitude," Qin said.
China chairs the six-party talks, which also include Japan, Russia and South Korea and were last held in December 2008. North Korea left the talks last spring and shortly afterward infuriated the international community by detonating a second nuclear test device. Pyongyang was punished for that action by heightened U.N. Security Council sanctions.
The last official direct contact between the North and the Obama administration occurred in December during a visit to Pyongyang by U.S. special envoy to North Korea Stephen Bosworth.
Bosworth, who is traveling in Asia with nuclear negotiator Sung Kim, is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei in Beijing to talk about the North's weapons program, Qin said. South Korean senior nuclear negotiator Wi Sung-lac is also expected to meet with Wu tomorrow.
The U.S. State Department said yesterday that Bosworth is not planning on visiting North Korea during his travels over the next few days to six-party nations (Agence France-Presse I/MSN.com, Feb. 23).
Pyongyang's communist party chief traveled today to China, where he is thought to be carrying a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to Chinese President Hu Jintao, AFP reported.
The trip follows a recent visit by a senior communist party official from Beijing to North Korea, where he extended an invitation from Hu to have the reclusive Kim visit China. The Yonhap News Agency reported that the letter delivered to Hu would probably address Kim's thoughts on the invitation (Agence France Presse II/Google News, Feb. 23).
Meanwhile, South Africa has informed the U.N. Security Council that in November it seized a North Korean cargo of tank parts headed by sea for the Republic of Congo in Central Africa, Reuters reported yesterday.
Under Security Council Resolution 1874, passed in the wake of the North's second nuclear test, all North Korean weapons sales are outlawed. The resolution builds on previous sanctions passed after Pyongyang's first 2006 nuclear test. It permits nations to intercept, examine and seize questionable North Korean cargo.
"The latest incident shows that the sanctions are working," said a Western diplomat to Reuters. "But it also shows that we have to be vigilant. The D.P.R.K. is still trying to violate the sanctions."
In December, officials in Thailand seized approximately 35 tons of conventional North Korean weaponry from a cargo plane refueling in Bangkok (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Feb. 22