WASHINGTON – Foreign ministers from around 20 nations gather on Tuesday todiscuss how to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions through diplomatic andfinancial pressure, but China, seen as a key player in any long-termsolution, will be absent.
The Vancouver meeting, co-hosted by Canada and the United States, comesamid signs that tensions on the peninsula have eased, at least temporarily.North and South Korea held talks for the first time in two years last weekand Pyongyang says it will send athletes across the border to thePyeongchang Winter Olympics.
But the United States and others say the international community must lookat ways of expanding a broad range of sanctions aimed at North Korea’snuclear program.
“There is growing evidence that our maximum pressure campaign is being feltin North Korea. They are feeling the strain,” said Brian Hook, the StateDepartment’s director of policy planning.
Hook told a briefing in Washington that participants, including U.S.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, would examine how to boost maritimesecurity around North Korea to intercept ships trying to defy sanctions aswell as “disrupting funding and disrupting resources.”
Separately, 17 members of the 105-nation Proliferation Security Initiative,which aims to prevent the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, onFriday said “it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts to put maximumpressure on North Korea”.
But North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has shown no sign of willingness togive in to U.S. demands and negotiate away a weapons program he sees asvital to his survival.
Another challenge in Vancouver will be the absence of China, which hassignificant influence in North Korea. Beijing is Pyongyang’s only ally andits chief trading partner.
The meeting primarily groups those nations that sent troops to the Koreanwar of 1950-53, when China fought alongside the North. Beijing condemnedthe gathering.
“Holding this kind of meeting that doesn’t include important parties to theKorean peninsula nuclear issue actually cannot help in advancing anappropriate resolution to the issue,” foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kangtold a regular briefing.
Other invitees include Japan and South Korea, front-line U.S. allies in theWashington-led effort against North Korea.
Hook said China and Russia – which is also not attending – would be fullybriefed on the conclusions. That said, Beijing’s absence will be felt, saydiplomats.
“Without China there is a real limit as to what can be achieved,” said onesenior diplomatic source.
Zhao Tong, a North Korea expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing,said the United States did not want Russia and China potentiallydistracting the discussion by raising their proposal to halt jointU.S.-South Korean military drills that the North says are a prelude to aninvasion.
Fears of war have eased somewhat after the first round of intra-Koreantalks in more than two years, and Trump, in an interview with the WallStreet Journal on Thursday, appeared to signal more of an openness towarddiplomacy after a period of exchanging insults and threats with Kim.
But U.S. officials say hawks in the Trump administration remain pessimisticthat the North-South contacts will lead anywhere.
Even so, debate within the U.S. administration over whether to give moreactive consideration to military options, such as a pre-emptive strike on aNorth Korean nuclear or missile site, has lost momentum ahead of February’sOlympic games, the officials said.
For his part, Trump has vacillated between praising and criticizing China,which he has cast as critical to reining in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
The White House on Friday welcomed news that China’s imports from NorthKorea plunged in December to their lowest in dollar terms since at leastthe start of 2014, with trade curbed by United Nations sanctions.
Last month, however, Trump accused China of allowing oil into North Korea,which he said would prevent “a friendly solution” to the nuclear crisis.Beijing denied the charge.