China pushes for resumption of North Korean nuclear talks

China has urged the six countries involved in talks about North Korea’s nuclear programme to make a concerted effort to create conditions to resume negotiations stalled for more than six years.

There have been more positive signs that North Korea is ready to resume negotiations, although previous efforts to revive the talks involving both Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States have been fruitless.

However, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said his country and Russia were working closely together to try to get the talks going again.

“Under the current situation, we hope that all relevant parties can work and go together to create conditions for the resumption of the six-party talks at an early date,” Mr Yi said in an interview with Russian news agency Interfax. “Both China and Russia continue to maintain close communication, co-ordination and co-operation over this matter.

Dialogue process

“In the present situation, I hope that all sides can work hard together, meet each other halfway and create conditions to resume the six-party talks, to strive to put the nuclear issue at the earliest date possible on a dialogue process that is sustainable, effective and cannot be gone back on.”

The phrase “cannot be gone back on” is key as there has been a lot of back and forth in the talks. In 2005, North Korea agreedto suspend its nuclear programme in return for diplomatic rewards and energy assistance, but the deal collapsed in 2008, with North Korea declaring the deal void after refusing to allow inspections to verify compliance.

Last month, South Korea’s top nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kook said China and Russia, as well as the US, Japan, and South Korea, had reached “a certain degree of consensus” on how to restart an “exploratory dialogue” on Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

China’s foreign ministry released the text of Mr Yi’s interviews in Russia in which he said the North Korean nuclear issue had “been around for a long time and is intricate and complicated”, adding how “only if the symptoms and the causes are addressed . . . and there is a full and equal resolution of all sides’ concerns can we find a way out.”

Strained

The talks about talks have proven difficult. China has been pushing for the resumption of talks, but relations with North Korea have been strained by its nuclear programme, as Pyongyang ignores China in making decisions on nuclear and long-range rocket testing.

– (Additional reporting by Reuters)