The top American and North Korean diplomats were meeting face-to-face on Friday at an Asian security conference, but the rare contact is mired in tensions over the sinking of a South Korean warship and unlikely to advance efforts to rid Pyongyang of nuclear weapons.
The North has denied responsibility for the sinking of the Cheonan navy ship that killed 46 sailors, despite an international investigation that found otherwise. The U.S. and South Korea are demanding an apology from Pyongyang, dooming any prospects of a breakthrough to help ease tensions on the Korean peninsula.
All members of the stalled six-nation talks aimed at ridding the North of its nuclear weapons attended Friday’s meeting in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, but there was little hope of a thaw.
“Here in Asia, an isolated and belligerent North Korea has embarked on a campaign of provocative, dangerous behaviour, including its attack on the Republic of Korea naval warship the Cheonan earlier this year,” Ms. Clinton told the ministers.
“Peaceful resolution of the issues on the Korean Peninsula will be possible only if North Korea fundamentally changes its behaviour,” she said.
A day earlier, North Korea warned the U.S. to back off its plans impose fresh sanctions and hold joint naval exercises this weekend with South Korea, saying they were hostile actions that could endanger the whole region.
“If the U.S. is really interested in the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, it should halt the military exercises and sanctions that destroy the mood for dialogue,” North Korean spokesman Ri Tong Il told reporters.
The two Koreas remain in a state of war because a peace treaty was never signed to end their three—year conflict in the 1950s.
South Korea has said the naval drills are defensive training exercises and the sanctions are not to avenge the ship sinking but instead target the North’s illicit nuclear activities.
Both Koreas were battling Friday over the exact wording of one paragraph in a regional security statement about the sinking.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is expected to stick to the wording it used in an earlier statement issued this week in which the group’s foreign ministers said they “deplored” the ship sinking.
“High tones, high voices will not achieve anything,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said on the meeting’s sidelines. “I think what’s most important is now North Korea is also here. I think that augurs well. It could be the first positive step.”
While the international investigation concluded the North sunk the ship by torpedo attack, North Korea is lobbying the U.N. Command, which governs the armistice, to let the regime conduct its own probe. Military officers from the command and North Korea were to meet Friday along the heavily fortified border that divides the peninsula, known as the Demilitarized Zone.
The meeting in Vietnam, attended by 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and 17 others that include China, Russia and Japan, will also address military-run Myanmar. It has been prodded to call free and fair elections, which the junta has said will be held this year, without giving a date.
Ms. Clinton called on ASEAN states to press Myanmar’s military rulers to abandon any nuclear weapons cooperation it may have with North Korea. She said “recent events” had called into question Myanmar’s pledges to abide by U.N. sanctions on North Korea that include restrictions on arms transaction. She did not elaborate but there have been reports of North Korean ships with military hardware docking in Myanmar.
Ms. Clinton is also criticising the junta for human rights abuses.
