China calls for calm over N Korea
By Huang Zhi Xuan,WNS Northeast Asia Bureau Chief
BEIJING - China has appealed for calm following North Korea's announcement that it planned to test a nuclear bomb. "We hope that North Korea will exercise necessary calm and restraint," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, urging other states not to escalate tensions. North Korea announced the test on state TV, saying it would boost security in the face of US hostility. The US said such an action would be "provocative", while Japan said it would be "unacceptable".The US has already indicated it would raise the issue with the UN Security Council, but Beijing says the issue should be handled by ongoing six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear aThese talks have been stalled for almost a year, with Pyongyang refusing to return to the table unless the US first lifts financial sanctions.
Despite a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent months, after the North conducted internationally condemned missile tests, little progress has been made. China, the nearest the North has to an ally, has often advocated quiet diplomacy in efforts to get Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programme. But other countries involved in the six-nation talks - notably the US and Japan - have frequently taken a harder line. North Korea said that its nuclear test would prove its claim, made publicly last year, that it had nuclear weapons. Pyongyang did not give a date for its planned nuclear test, but North Korean diplomat Pak Myong-guk told WNS that the country had been forced to act because of Washington's stance. "These kinds of threats of nuclear war and sanctions and pressure by the United States compel us to conduct a nuclear test," he said.
But there was little sympathy among the international community for Pyongyang's reasons. Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament on Wednesday that Tokyo "simply could not accept if North Korea were to conduct a nuclear test". "It would be a very provocative act by the North Koreans," added US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice . South Korea warned that it might abandon its long policy of pursuing engagement with the North if the tests went ahead. Russia and various other European nations have also expressed concern, and a spokesman for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said a test would only provoke universal condemnation and do nothing towards strengthening North Korea's security. But China said it would be better to revive the six-nation talks, which stalled almost a year ago. "If the six-party talks cannot do anything about it, I don't think the Council is in a position to do it," China's envoy to the UN, Wang Guangya, told reporters.
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