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Chinese Leader Sets Off for North Korea
BEIJING (AP) - China’s No. 2 leader began a ``goodwill visit’’ to North Korea on Wednesday as efforts mount to convene a second round of six-nation talks on the insular nation’s nuclear program - a parley that would probably be held, like its predecessor, in Beijing. Wu Bangguo, a member of the Communist Party’s Standing Committee and head of China’s legislature, is leading a state delegation that also includes a vice premier, Zeng Peiyan, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Also aboard: Wang Yi, the diplomat who is China’s point man on North Korea.
Some heavies there.
A top-level military official is also on the trip, Xinhua said. The North’s official news agency, KCNA, reported the party arrived in Pyongyang late Wednesday morning at the invitation of North Korea. The trip by Wu is be the highest-level visit to the North by a Chinese leader in more than two years. It comes as China encourages the reconvening of six-nation talks over the North’s nuclear program.
"Listen, you nuts, you’re coming to the conference whether you like it or not."
Many believe Beijing, North Korea’s leash holder most powerful ally, is exerting pressure on Pyongyang through diplomatic channels. The North said last week it was not interested in more talks unless Washington agrees to discuss signing a nonaggression treaty agreeing not to launch a pre-emptive attack. But a few days later, it said it would consider President Bush’s offer for written security assurances to resolve the crisis. The dual responses are characteristic of the North’s schizophrenia delicate game of brinkmanship - welcoming progress, then rejecting it, then welcoming it again.
Then agan, they could just be nuts.
China, in its dealings with North Korea, is struggling to balance its duty to its longtime communist ally and neighbor with its deep trepidation at what a nuclear Korean Peninsula might mean for Chinese security.
Weather forecasting being the inexact science that it is, you just never know where the fallout will land.
A six-nation summit in Beijing in August brought together the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The talks adjourned with no concrete progress but with a promise to meet again - an agreement that the North since has questioned. Last week, though, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhang Qiyue referred to ``the next Beijing talks,’’ implying that China considers them a certainty.
"Youse muggs, I’m tellin’ youse ..."
Posted by: Steve White 2003-10-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=20478