Just a day after Donald Trump
and Xi Jinping phone conversation over North Korea, China has strongly objected
to a US led meeting in Canada’s Vancouver that called for strict implementation
of sanctions imposed on North Korea.
Calling the meeting illegal
and a Cold War vestige, a spokesperson of China’s Foreign Office said, “It will
only drive a wedge among the international community and undermine the
concerted efforts to seek proper settlement of the Korean Peninsula nuclear
issue.”
The US and Canada hosted Vancouver
Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on Security and Stability on the Korean Peninsula on
16th January. The meeting was aimed at “the Complete, Verifiable,
and Irreversible Denuclearization of North Korea”, as the US State Department
summed it.
Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary
of State, said the purpose of the meetings was to improve the effectiveness of
the maximum pressure campaign and combat North Korea’s attempts to evade
sanctions.
China raised objections over meeting
and its participants, the 20 countries of the United Nations Command (UNC) that
supported South Korea during the 1950s Korea War, “We all know that the
so-called UN Command, as a product of the Cold War era, has long lost its
relevance. As initiators of the meeting, the US and Canada co-hosted the
meeting under the banner of the so-called UN Command sending states. That is
Cold War mentality pure and simple.”
The meeting that excluded China
and Russia was attended by 20 nations including the US, Canada, South Korea, Japan,
France, Britain, the Philippines, Sweden and Australia and none of them had any
trade relation with North Korea last year.
China argued that when no
major parties of the Korean peninsula issue were present in the meeting,
expecting any solution through it was a futile exercise, questioning the ‘legality
and representativeness’ of the meeting.
China also countered the
tough message of the military option that the US led meeting sent to North
Korea. China’s Foreign Office said on the move, “Only through dialogue, equally
addressing the reasonable concerns of all parties, can a way to an effective and
peaceful resolution be found.”
Tillerson had warned that the
ultimate responsibility for producing a new future lies with North Korea and it
can only be achieved by abandoning its current path of pursuing missile and
nuclear weapons technologies.
But if the North doesn’t do
so and diplomacy fails, it may trigger military confrontation, "We have to
recognize that the threat is growing and that if North Korea does not choose
the pathway of engagement, discussion, negotiation then they themselves will
trigger an option," Tillerson had added.
The daylong meeting concluded
with a joint announcement that a nuclear-armed North Korea was not acceptable
and if the country desired a future, it must follow the path of complete,
verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.
In spite of the international
sanctions against its missile and nuclear weapons programme, North Korea successfully
test fired many missiles last year including nuclear capable inter-continental
ballistic missiles (ICBM) and detonated a hydrogen bomb as well.
The country has now declared itself
a nuclear power, threatening the world with its recent military advances and its
acts like firing missiles over Japan or threatening the US military base at
Guam in the Pacific, coupled with its no holds barred war rhetoric, have escalated
the tension like never before.
©SantoshChaubey