Meanwhile, the government of the DPRK agreed yesterday to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program, according to China’s Foreign Ministry. The talks, which include the governments of China, Japan, Russia, south Korea, and the United States, have been stalled since November 2005, when Washington imposed new financial sanctions against north Korea.

Moscow, Beijing, and Seoul have joined the U.S.-led campaign of economic and diplomatic pressure on the DPRK since Pyongyang conducted a nuclear arms test October 8.

"I'm pleased and I want to thank the Chinese for encouraging the meeting that got the agreement to get the six-party talks restarted," said U.S. president George Bush. He said the talks would aim to get north Korea to abandon its nuclear program "in a verifiable fashion."

China, which supplies 90 percent of north Korea's oil, exported no crude oil to the DPRK in September. Beijing held back 12,000 barrels of oil a day from Pyongyang even while it imported more coal and electricity from the DPRK.

However, despite earlier inspections of north Korean cargo by Chinese border guards as mandated by the UN Security Council, press reports from the China-north Korea border suggest that the inspections have died down.

“There are just as many trucks as before the sanctions,” Mr. Li, a Chinese businessman in the border town of Dadong, told the Globe and Mail October 30.

The DPRK’s decision to return to the six-party talks came five days after the government of south Korea announced it was banning the entry of north Korean officials who are supposedly part of the north’s nuclear program.

The travel ban is the first concrete measure Seoul has taken to comply with the U.S.-engineered resolution, approved by the UN Security Council October 14, which instituted harsh sanctions on the DPRK.

An October 27 statement from the DPRK’s National Reconciliation Council said Washington's pressures were designed to "incite confrontation between fellow countrymen and push the situation on the Korean peninsula to the phase of war.” Washington has 30,000 troops in south Korea to maintain the division of that country.

On October 27, some 8,000 south Korean army, navy, and air force troops staged the largest amphibious landing exercise in their history.

“It’s regular training,” Marine captain Han No Soo told the Associated Press. “But yes, North Korea is in the back of our minds. Some of us may be thinking of this as a North Korean beach.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home