China has leverage to persuade North Korea to go back to talks over its nuclear ambitions, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Friday, after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
BEIJING: China has leverage to persuade North Korea to go back to talks over its nuclear ambitions, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Friday, after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
North Korea’s rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles has fuelled a surge in regional tensions as United Nations-led sanctions appear to have failed to bite deeply enough to change its behaviour.
Western diplomats have said that China is largely responsible for patchy enforcement.
But Beijing bristles at the notion that it should be doing more to rein in North Korea, which does about 90 percent of its trade with China, saying it is fully enforcing U. N. sanctions and that everyone has a responsibility to lower tension and get talks back on track.
„We want to force the negotiations… and it’s true that China is well placed to push,“ Le Drian told reporters during a joint briefing with Wang after arriving in Beijing for a four-day visit.
A military solution was an „extreme“ option, he said.
China advocates for a „dual suspension“ plan to address the issue in which Pyongyang would halt its nuclear and missile programmes and Washington would stop military exercises with its allies in the region, though U.
