Special meeting on Korea set at UN

China and the US should commit to increasing mutual trust, cooperating on a wide range of issues to become long-term partners of mutual benefit and safeguarding world peace and stability together, said Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a meeting with former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger on Thursday in New York.

Wang and Kissinger also had deep exchanges on issues of mutual concern, including the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Wang will attend a UN Security Council special ministerial meeting on the peninsula nuclear issue, chaired by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday.

Wang said the historic meeting of Xi and US President Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida set the direction for bilateral relations.

Kissinger said all the people and leaders he has spoken with believed the first meeting between Xi and Trump was “very successful”, and both sides shared similar views on many issues.

China and the US can become partners, although there are differences or competition in some areas between the two countries, Kissinger said, adding that it takes “wisdom and action” from both sides to achieve mutual prosperity.

Wang also met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov on Thursday, and both sides agreed that all parties should implement UN Security Council resolutions related to DPRK in a comprehensive and complete manner.

Both agreed that measures should be made to curb the process of the DPRK nuclear missile development while stepping up efforts to hold dialogues among related parties, so as to bring the DPRK nuclear issue back to the right track of dialogue and consultation.

The Security Council meeting will cover ways to maximize the impact of existing sanctions on Pyongyang and show resolve to respond to further provocations with appropriate new measures, a US State Department spokesman said at a briefing.

Trump said on Thursday that a major conflict with North Korea is possible in the standoff over DPRK’s nuclear and missile programs, but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome to the dispute.

“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview ahead of his 100th day in offi ce, which is Saturday.

Nonetheless, Trump said he wanted to peacefully resolve a crisis that has bedeviled mul-tiple US presidents, a path that he and his administration are emphasizing by preparing a variety of new economic sanc-tions while not taking the mili-tary option off the table.

“We’d love to solve things diplomatically, but it’s very dif-fi cult,” he said.On Wednesday, the Trump administration said that after briefing senators on US policy toward Pyongyang, it aims to push the country into disman-tling its nuclear and missile pro-grams through tougher interna-tional sanctions and diplomatic pressure while remaining open to negotiations to bring that about.

China has taken note of the briefing and recent remarks by senior US offi cials, which proj-ect a message of hope that the situation on the peninsula can be resolved peacefully through talks, Foreign Ministry spokes-man Geng Shuang said on Thursday.

“We think the message is posi-tive and should be affi rmed,” he said in a daily news conference in Beijing, saying he hoped that all related parties could get the message.

Geng also said that because the US is a major party to the issue, “We hope and welcome that Washington will assume the role and the responsibility that it should.”

Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai said on Wednesday that China had a shared interest with the United States on the Korean Peninsula, where both want continued stability and progress toward denuclearization.

“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is a challenge to all of us — China, the US and Rus-sia and others — and we should work together to seek a diplo-matic solution to the issue,” Cui said in an interview with CNN