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President Lee Myung-bak, right, shakes hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao before their summit at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, Monday. / Yonhap |
By Kang Hyun-kyung
China said Monday it had delivered its worries to North Korea over the latter’s plan to launch a satellite from a long-range rocket, pledging efforts to dissuade its neighbor from going ahead with the move.
During a summit with President Lee Myung-bak, Chinese President Hu Jintao noted that the North needs to focus on feeding its people, instead of the launch.
Kim Tae-hyo, a senior presidential secretary for foreign policy strategy, told reporters during a briefing on the Lee-Hu summit results that Beijing said it would continue to press its poor neighbor to halt the launch.
The Chinese leader was quoted as saying that the action would pose a grave threat to regional security.
North Korea’s planned launch of the satellite has also drawn deep concern from its Cold-War ally Russia.
President Dmitry Medvedev characterized it as a missile launch, saying it would destabilize peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Medvedev also said Russia had also sent a message warning North Korea of the consequences earlier, echoing the view that Pyongyang should focus on feeding its people.
Millions of North Koreans are reportedly malnourished and starving due to chronic food shortages. The regime’s poor management of the economy and bad weather conditions have been causing crop shortages in the isolated country.
During the summit with the Russian leader, President Lee said North Korea should opt for reform and opening up its economy to the outside world to follow a Chinese or Vietnamese economic growth model.
Medvedev completely agreed with Lee over this, according to Cheong Wa Dae. Lee held the summit with Hu and Medvedev on the sidelines of the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit that started Monday.
China and Russia are participating nations in the six-party talks to terminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. The remaining four countries are South and North Korea, the United States and Japan.
Prior to the North’s announcement, there were signs that the resumption of the talks were imminent as Pyongyang agreed to halt its enriched uranium program and invite nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to its nuclear site to monitor activities.
Russia’s position on the satellite launch is firmer than that of China, and its rhetoric against the launch is clearer, according to Cheong Wa Dae.
The launch was one of the key issues of Lee’s talks with Hu and Medvedev.
During the Lee-Medvedev talks, the two leaders briefly discussed a gas pipeline project to send Russian gas to South Korea via North Korea. They also exchanged ideas on nuclear terrorism, the topic of the nuclear summit.
Lee and Hu discussed North Korean refugees in China, who are sent back to their home once caught there, a free trade agreement and drawing a maritime boundary in the West Sea.
The two sides agreed to kick off working-level talks to draw the border at an early date. The Exclusive Economic Zones of the two countries overlap in the West Sea and this leads to recurrent disputes over Ieodo, a submerged rock located southwest of Jeju Island.
Regarding North Korean refugees, the two sides agreed to take into consideration humanitarian perspectives when handling them and to respect their counterpart’s position.
Seoul and Beijing also agreed to start negotiations to clinch a free trade deal as soon as possible. In January, Lee and Hu agreed to begin negotiations after hearings and cabinet meetings for policy coordination were completed in South Korea.
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