UN envoy: Keep channels open

‘There is urgent need to prevent miscalculations to reduce risks of war’

New York: A senior UN envoy warned there was a grave risk that a miscalculation could trigger conflict with North Korea as he urged Pyongyang to keep communication channels open after a rare visit to the reclusive state.

Jeffrey Feltman’s trip to the North – the first by such a high-ranking UN diplomat since 2010 – kicked off less than a week after Pyongyang said it test-fired a new ballistic missile capable of reaching the US.

The United Nations said Feltman met North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho and Vice-Foreign Minister Pak Myong-kuk and they “agreed that the current situation was the most tense and dangerous peace and security issue in the world today”.

Noting the “urgent need to prevent miscalculations and open channels to reduce the risks of conflict,” Feltman said the international community was committed to finding a peaceful solution.

Feltman, the UN’s under-secre- tary-general for political affairs, also stressed the importance of full implementation of all relevant Security Council resolutions.

The UN Security Council has hit the North with a package of sanctions over its increasingly powerful missile and nuclear tests, which have rattled the US and its regional allies South Korea and Japan.

Earlier, North Korea’s state news agency KCNA said “the US policy of hostility toward the DPRK (North Korea) and its nuclear blackmail are to blame for the current tense situation on the Korean peninsula”.

But it added the North had agreed with the UN “to regularise communications through visits at various levels”.

The KCNA report did not mention any meetings with leader Kim Jongun, who has ramped up his impoverished nation’s missile and nuclear program in recent years in order to achieve Pyongyang’s stated goal of developing a warhead capable of hitting the US mainland. — AFP