|
TOKYO, JAPAN - A Chinese envoy who visited North Korea last month pressed its leader Kim Jong-Il to resume a deadlocked nuclear disarmament deal before US presidential elections take place, a report said Sunday.
Wang Jiarui, Director of the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, told Kim he believed it was "highly likely" a Democrat would win the election in November, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Japan reported, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.
"If that happens, officials in charge of the talks will be replaced by new ones so that negotiations in the six-party talks will get more difficult to bring forward," Wang told Kim, prompting him to resume the talks at an early date, the report said.
The North was supposed to disable its main atomic plants by December 31 and list all its nuclear programmes under the six-nation deal negotiated by the two Koreas, China, the United States, Russia and Japan.
North Korea said it submitted a full list in November, but the United States says it failed to meet the deadline for a full declaration, leading to an impasse.
Kim told Wang in the meeting that there was no change in his nation's wish to move the talks forward, Chinese state media Xinhua news agency has said.
Kim urged nations involved in the deal to fulfil their side of the bargain, North Korea was willing to work with China to try to push for its full implementation, Xinhua has said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to visit South Korea, China and Japan later this month as part of diplomatic efforts to get the deal moving again, her spokesman said Friday. --AFP
| 
