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US sends envoy to Seoul to defuse crisis
Seoul, Jan 12: A top Japanese official said North Korea was playing a `dangerous game` with its nuclear ambitions as a senior US envoy flew to Seoul in the latest bid to defuse the crisis.
Seoul, Jan 12: A top Japanese official said North Korea was playing a "dangerous game" with its nuclear ambitions as a senior US envoy flew to Seoul in the latest bid to defuse the crisis.
Seoul, Jan 12: A top Japanese official said North Korea was playing a "dangerous game" with its nuclear ambitions as a senior US envoy flew to Seoul in the latest bid to defuse the crisis.
Within hours it said it was free to resume missile-firing tests, ratcheting up tension with the United States in its bid to force Washington into negotiations and threatening to wipe out the world's only superpower should it bring the "dark clouds of war" to the Korean peninsula.
South Korea officials, their capital within striking range of an awesome North artillery line-up, said the North was trying to hasten resolution of the nuclear standoff.
Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Shinzo Abe, told Fuji Television in an interview from the eastern Siberian city of Khabarovsk that Pyongyang was "playing a dangerous game", but that the issue could be resolved through dialogue.
"If the world applies pressure and convinces North Korea that it will not gain anything with this game...I think it is possible for the situation to return to the way it was," he said.
South Korea's unification ministry, meanwhile, said North Korea "apparently thinks the US is trying to buy time".
"With the statement (to pull out of the NPT), Pyongyang is saying it can't wait for Washington to come back to the table after the Iraqi dispute is settled."
After a senior North Korean official wrapped up three days of talks in New Mexico with former US ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, Washington said Pyongyang had failed to address issues of concern.
"The North Koreans told me that they don't plan to build nuclear weapons and I took that as a positive statement," Richardson told reporters after concluding almost nine hours of talks with Han Song Ryol, a high-ranking member of the North Korean delegation to the United Nations.
Bureau Report
Seoul, Jan 12: A top Japanese official said North Korea was playing a "dangerous game" with its nuclear ambitions as a senior US envoy flew to Seoul in the latest bid to defuse the crisis.
Within hours it said it was free to resume missile-firing tests, ratcheting up tension with the United States in its bid to force Washington into negotiations and threatening to wipe out the world's only superpower should it bring the "dark clouds of war" to the Korean peninsula.
South Korea officials, their capital within striking range of an awesome North artillery line-up, said the North was trying to hasten resolution of the nuclear standoff.
Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Shinzo Abe, told Fuji Television in an interview from the eastern Siberian city of Khabarovsk that Pyongyang was "playing a dangerous game", but that the issue could be resolved through dialogue.
"If the world applies pressure and convinces North Korea that it will not gain anything with this game...I think it is possible for the situation to return to the way it was," he said.
South Korea's unification ministry, meanwhile, said North Korea "apparently thinks the US is trying to buy time".
"With the statement (to pull out of the NPT), Pyongyang is saying it can't wait for Washington to come back to the table after the Iraqi dispute is settled."
After a senior North Korean official wrapped up three days of talks in New Mexico with former US ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, Washington said Pyongyang had failed to address issues of concern.
"The North Koreans told me that they don't plan to build nuclear weapons and I took that as a positive statement," Richardson told reporters after concluding almost nine hours of talks with Han Song Ryol, a high-ranking member of the North Korean delegation to the United Nations.
Bureau Report