China says war must not be allowed on Korean Peninsula
BEIJING: War must not be allowed to break out on the Korean peninsula and the issue must be resolved through talks, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the danger of “sleepwalking” into conflict.
Xi made his comments to visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in just days after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions.
But the White House said on Wednesday that no negotiations could be held with North Korea until it improved its behavior. The White House has declined to say whether President Donald Trump, who has taken a tougher rhetorical line toward North Korea, approved Tillerson’s overture.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tillerson’s offer of direct contacts with North Korea was “a very good signal,” while warning that a US strike on the North would have catastrophic consequences.
North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29, which it said could put all of the United States within range, in defiance of international pressure and UN sanctions.
While South Korea and China share the goal of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and stop testing increasingly sophisticated long-range missiles, the two have not seen eye-toeye on how to achieve this.
Meeting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Xi told Moon that the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula must be stuck to, and that war and chaos cannot NEW DELHI: The question of whether India is losing influence in South Asia to China has assumed added significance in light of the recent election victory by an anti-India leftist alliance in Nepal.
The coalition forged between the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center) is known for its ties with Beijing.
“Changing global politics and the rise of China have affected Nepal’s political dynamics,” Mallika Shakya, a Nepali academic at the New Delhi-based South Asia University, told Arab News.
Happymon Jacob, assistant professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Arab News: be allowed to happen, state media said.
“The peninsula issue must in the end be resolved via dialogue and consultation,” Xi was cited as saying.
China and South Korea have an important “China’s growing presence in South Asia has disconcerted India in its traditional sphere of influence.”
He said New Delhi’s “visionless policy in South Asia has cost us very dearly, not only in Nepal but also in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.”
Jacob added: “In Nepal, the unwarranted economic blockade over a year ago has cost us dearly. In the Maldives, the way we tried to interfere in its domestic affairs has alienated us.”
New Delhi-based journalist Suman Sharma said: “India wants to be seen not to be losing ground to China. The strategic partnership with the US is aimed at counterbalancing China.”
India’s former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal told Arab News: “The relative loss of India’s influence in its neighborhood is due to China, which is a highly destabilizing shared interest in maintaining peace and stability, and China is willing to work with South Korea to prevent war and promote talks, Xi added.
China would support North and South force in the region.”
He said: “Smaller neighbors use the China card in order to have the best of both worlds, and we have to live with it.”
Jacob said: “China is a rising power, so it’s natural that small neighbors will turn to it. But it wouldn’t have happened so quickly had India been careful in dealing with the neighborhood.”
He added: “In a hurry to be a strong ally of a receding power — the US — New Delhi isn’t involving itself proactively in the region.
“Why did we let China negotiate between Myanmar and Bangladesh on the issue of Rohingya repatriation? India should’ve done that.”
But since “China is an inevitable superpower in the region, a confrontational attitude will do no good,” Jacob said. “We need to engage and balance China.” Korea to improve relations as this was good for easing tension, he said.
Xi’s warm tone followed nearly a year of tense relations between the two countries.
China has been furious about the deployment of the US-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antimissile system in South Korea, saying its powerful radar can see far into China and will do nothing to ease tension with North Korea.
China and South Korea agreed in late October that they would normalize exchanges and move past the dispute over THAAD, which froze trade and business exchanges, and Moon has been keen to put the dispute behind them.
Xi reiterated China’s position on THAAD and said he hoped South Korea would continue to “appropriately handle” the issue.
Guterres, speaking to reporters in Tokyo after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said Security Council resolutions on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs must be fully implemented by Pyongyang and other countries.
“It is very clear that the Security Council resolutions must be fully implemented, first of all by North Korea, but by all other countries whose role is crucial to ... achieve the result we all aim at, which is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Guterres said.
He added that Security Council unity was also vital “to allow for the possibility of diplomatic engagement” that would allow denuclearization to take place.
“The worst possible thing that could happen is for us all to sleepwalk into a war that might have very dramatic circumstances,” Guterres said.
He said he expected a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday would deliver a strong expression of unity and the need for diplomacy to resolve the issue.