Tokyo, Japan (AHN) – Japan on Tuesday signaled opposition to holding an emergency meeting among allies to ease tensions in the Korean Peninsula, joining other nations in calling on North Korea to take concrete steps toward denuclearization following its fatal attack on a South Korean island last week.
Akitaka Saiki, a director general at the Japanese Foreign Ministry, said the circumstances were not appropriate to hold a Six Party meeting, according to the Kyodo News Agency.
China over the weekend proposed hosting emergency Six Party talks in December. The proposal was in response to Pyongyang’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23, which killed two South Korean marines and two civilians, and wounded at least 18 other people.
Beijing, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States are part of negotiations, called Six Party talks, with North Korea about disarmament.
South Korea and Washington have expressed little interest holding talks without Pyongyang showing “sincerity” and “seriousness of purpose” on denuclearization as well as stabilizing relations in the Korean Peninsula.
“The appropriate circumstances for the resumption of the Talks must be created first,” the South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement Monday.
“What we are looking for is fundamental changes in North Korea’s behavior,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the same day. “We want to see North Korea live up to its international obligations, cease its provocative behavior, take on a more constructive posture. Then we’re in a position to evaluate whether discussions can be fruitful.”
The White House went further and called on Beijing to act decisively.
“We continue to urge China to use its influence and persuasion with the North Koreans to address their behavior and to address the serious problems that arose last week,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Pyongyang said through its state-run Korean Central News Agency that its action on Yeonpyeong was “a decisive self-defensive measure to cope with the enemy’s reckless military provocation of firing shells inside the territorial waters.”
Warnings, including a telephone call to Seoul on the day of the incident, were issued ahead of the “retaliatory strike,” according to Pyongyang, which on Monday called South Korea and the United States “criminals” engaging in a “war of aggression.”
South Korea and Washington began joint annual Hoguk military exercises early this month and in the Yellow Sea last week. American officials have made clear the two exercises have long been planned and were not in response to the attack on Yeonpyeong.
The attack on Yeonpyeong follows revelations of Pyongyang’s nuclear activity, in violation of United Nations sanctions. It also comes six months after the North’s sinking of the Seoul’s naval ship Cheonan, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.
The United States has no official ties with Pyongyang. It successfully pushed the U.N. Security Council last year to impose sanctions in response to the communist nation’s continued nuclear activities.
Apart from conducting nuclear tests, North Korea last year ended the 1953 ceasefire agreement ratified after the Korean War with the South. It remained defiant in the face of sanctions, warning “all-out war” to any nation that violated its sovereignty.
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