China to send envoy to North Korea

BEIJING: China will send a special envoy to North Korea this week, the government said yesterday, days after US President Donald Trump pressed Beijing to do more to curb North Korea’s nuclear threats.

The foreign ministry said President Xi Jinping’s special envoy, Song Tao, will travel to Pyongyang to brief officials about last month’s Chinese Communist Party congress and ‘other issues of mutual concern’.

Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang did not say whether the nuclear issue would be discussed but he said China was ‘committed to the denuclearisation of the peninsula, safeguarding peace and stability of the peninsula, and resolving the issue through dialogue and consultation’.

As Beijing prepared for the mission, Pyongyang maintained its war of words with Trump, with a ruling party newspaper saying the US president deserved the death penalty for insulting North Korean leader Kim JongUn.

China’s announcement came a day after the end of Trump’s five-nation tour of Asia, during which the US leader held meetings with Xi and urged him to act fast to rein in North Korea, warning that ‘ time is quickly running out’.

Trump has called on the region to take a united stance against the threat posed by isolated North Korea, which has sparked global alarm with its nuclear and missile tests in recent months.

China has backed a series of United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang and imposed banking restrictions on North Koreans, putting the Cold War- era allies at odds.

Song will be the first Chinese envoy to make an official trip to North Korea since October 2016, when vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin visited. Xi has never met Kim.

Washington has pressed China to strongarm Pyongyang into halting its weapons programmes by intensifying its use of economic leverage over the authoritarian regime. — AFP