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S.Korea urges China in punishing N.Korea over warship |
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(05/25/2010)
Seoul, PAB-Online
South Korea pressed China Tuesday to support international efforts to
punish North Korea for sinking a South Korean warship, as Pyongyang
issued threats of war over Seoul's reprisals.
Financial markets across Asia responded nervously to the escalating crisis, with one unconfirmed report from a group of North Korean defectors claiming that the communist state had placed its armed forces on combat alert.
"China seemed to understand the seriousness of the situation," a South Korean foreign ministry official said after senior Chinese official Wu Dawei held talks in Seoul with Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan.
Yu is mounting an intensive diplomatic drive to secure international support in the crisis. But unlike numerous other nations, China has declined so far publicly to blame its ally for the sinking and called anew for dialogue.
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak Monday announced a package of reprisals after international investigators reported that a North Korean submarine torpedoed the Cheonan on March 26 with the loss of 46 lives.
Lee cut trade and other exchanges and barred the North's merchant ships from using his country's sea lanes. He also said Seoul would refer the sinking to the United Nations Security Council.
China -- which could veto any council move for new sanctions -- is also under pressure from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, currently visiting Beijing, to get tougher with the North.
Its foreign ministry Tuesday repeated calls for restraint.
Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in the region was in the interest of all parties, and China would not tolerate any actions that would disturb that peace.
"We sincerely hope that all parties concerned stay calm and exercise restraint to properly handle relevant issues in order to avoid an escalation of the situation," Jiang told reporters.
"We believe dialogue is better than confrontation."
In Seoul, Foreign Minister Yu told Wu the sinking should be dealt with very seriously in the context of regional peace.
Wu, Beijing's special representative for Korean affairs, said he had "closely reviewed" the investigators' report, according to the ministry official quoted by Yonhap news agency.
The United States strongly backed Seoul's punitive measures and announced it would soon hold anti-submarine and other naval exercises with it.
The North says the South has faked evidence of its involvement in the Cheonan's sinking as part of a plot to ignite conflict. It has threatened "all-out war" in response to any punitive moves, a threat it repeated Tuesday.
"It is our firm stance that we will counteract with many strong measures including immediate all-out war for any kind of revenge or sanctioning (by South Korea)," Pyongyang's official news agency said in a commentary.
The Seoul-based defector group, North Korea Intellectual Solidarity, said the combat alert order was issued by leader Kim Jong-Il the day the multinational investigation team reported on Thursday.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service said it was checking the report, which helped push the won down almost three percent against the dollar. The Seoul stock market fell 2.75 per cent, and share prices across Asia suffered.
The impoverished North has its own economic problems.
The trade ban will cost it hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to a Seoul research group, which noted that the North had a 333 million dollar surplus in purely commercial trade with its neighbour last year.
As part of its punitive measures, South Korea Tuesday started installing loudspeakers along the tense border with the North in preparation for resuming propaganda broadcasts after a lapse of six years.
The North's military has threatened to open fire on the speakers.
Seoul was set to repeat its appeal for Beijing's backing when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrives Friday for talks.
Wen is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Lee before a three-way weekend summit between the two leaders and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in South Korea's Jeju island. (AFP/IP)
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