Wen, Hatoyama, Lee Push for North Korea Nuclear Talks | Worldwide

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Wen, Hatoyama, Lee Push for North Korea Nuclear Talks

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea pledged to work together to quickly restart talks aimed at removing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak said they wanted an early resumption of joint talks with North Korea, which also include the U.S. and Russia. Earlier this week Wen, visiting Pyongyang, won an assurance from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that he is willing to return to nuclear disarmament talks. The regime said in April it was abandoning the negotiations forever.

“The North Korean side during the negotiations expressed flexibility toward the six-party talks, and said they were not opposed to them,” Wen said at a press conference with Hatoyama and Lee in Beijing today. “We’ve come across some good luck,” he said of talks with the North. “If we take advantage of it and use it we can make some positive progress. If we miss this opportunity, we will waste a lot of effort.”

Wen said the nuclear issue occupied four of the 10 hours of his discussions with leaders including Kim.

“North Korea doesn’t just want to improve relations with the U.S., but also with South Korea and Japan,” Wen said.

Long Border

China until June had resisted efforts by Japan and the U.S. to get penalties imposed on North Korean entities involved in the country’s nuclear and missile programs. China is trying to avoid sudden regime change in North Korea, which could spark a refugee crisis along the 1,415-kilometer (880-mile) border it shares with its ally of six decades.

China’s stance changed after North Korea launched a rocket on April 5 and tested a nuclear device on May 25. China agreed in June to back curbs of loans and money transfers to North Korea as punishment for the tests.

Wen, 67, today pledged to uphold UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea.

“We will make joint efforts with other parties for an early resumption of the six-party talks, so as to safeguard peace and stability in Northeast Asia, and thereby to build an Asia of peace, harmony, openness and prosperity,” Wen, Hatoyama and Lee said in a joint statement.

The challenge for China, Japan and South Korea is to prevent Kim from exploiting differences among them that would delay any agreement to curtail North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, said Zhu Feng, a professor at Beijing University who specializes in international security issues.

‘Tricky’

“We all know who Kim Jong Il is, we know how tricky” the North Koreans are, Zhu said. “If China moves one way and Japan and South Korea move in the opposite direction, then we’ll leave room for North Korea to maneuver.”

Lee, 67, said that talks can’t be the endgame in dealing with North Korea, and any aid from the South is contingent on nuclear disarmament.

“North Korea’s returning to six-party talks can’t be a goal itself and North Korea should realize our goal is to result in agreement on North Korea’s abandoning its nuclear weapons program,” Lee told reporters in Beijing. “Once the precondition of the North’s disarmament is met, we can provide the support North wants.”

China came to the aid of North Korea during the 1950-1953 Korean War and China is North Korea’s main supplier of food and fuel. Now its economic ties to Japan and South Korea dwarf commerce with North Korea.

Trade Ties

In the first seven months of this year, China’s two-way trade with South Korea amounted to $81.2 billion, or 60 times its trade with North Korea, according to China’s Commerce Ministry. China’s trade with Japan was 89 times bigger than its trade with North Korea.

China and South Korea want to double annual trade between the two nations to $300 billion by 2015 and will look into a free-trade agreement, South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

Hatoyama, 62, also pushed for a free-trade pact in the region.

“I’m expecting progress on free-trade agreements between Japan and South Korea as well as Japan, South Korea and China,” Hatoyama said. “The three countries are joining together to take the lead against being ensnared by protectionist policies.”

Second Summit

The second summit between the three countries marks a further warming of ties with Japan. Hatoyama has pledged not to visit a shrine in Tokyo that memorializes Japan’s war dead, including leaders responsible for the country’s aggression in China during the first part of the 20th century. Visits by some of his predecessors angered China and South Korea, which were both occupied by Japan.

The three leaders also pledged to work together to help enact a new climate-change accord this December in Copenhagen, which is meant to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Hatoyama, who took office last month, has made climate change a focus of his administration, vowing to cut carbon emissions 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. His proposal is contingent on other countries adopting targets as well, something China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, has resisted. China, India and other developing countries say cutting emissions will crimp economic growth, and instead are focusing on reducing the amount of energy used to generate a given amount of economic output.

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