‘N. Korea miscalculation could trigger conflict’

UNITED NATIONS: A senior UN envoy warned Saturday 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 secretary general for political affairs, also stressed the importance of full implementation of all relevant Security Council resolutions.

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

South Korea yesterday imposed new unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang, a report said, in Seoul’s latest effort to pressure the North.

A total of 20 North Korean organisations, including banks and trading companies, and 12 North Korean individuals – mostly bankers – will be blacklisted as of today, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported citing a foreign ministry official.

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 Jong-Un.

Feltman’s visit also came after the US and South Korea launched their biggest-ever joint air exercise, which the North views as a provocation, accusing the drills of “revealing its intention to mount a surprise nuclear preemptive strike against the DPRK”.

Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force said yesterday that the US, Japan and South Korea will hold two days of missile tracking drills starting today. – AFP