North Korea and China are set to exchange visits by top-level officials, which may give a much-needed boost to international efforts to resume the nuclear talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Hui Liangyu, a Chinese vice premier, will visit Pyongyang for four days starting next Monday, China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
Hui is to lead a Chinese delegation to mark the 45th anniversary of a treaty of friendship between the two nations, according to the ministry's spokeswoman Jiang Yu. China remains the closest political and economic ally of the isolated North Korea.
But she did not elaborate on whether the Chinese vice premier will try to coax Pyongyang to rejoin the six-way talks and dissuade it from test-firing a long-range missile.
The Chinese official's Pyongyang trip is likely to be reciprocated by a visit by high-profile North Korean delegates to Beijing.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the North's official media, reported Tuesday that Yang Hyong-sop, vice president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, will lead a delegation to celebrations of the same anniversary in China.
The KCNA said Yang's trip would be a "goodwill visit," but it gave no details including when the delegation will visit China, however.
The North Korea-China friendship treaty was signed on July 11, 1961. Diplomatic ties between the close allies were normalized on Oct. 6, 1949, only five days after the People's Republic of China was founded.
Officials here expect that China will use the series of high-level trips to press North Korea to stop its alleged missile launch preparations and return to the six-way talks that have been stalled for more than half a year.
The North's alleged move to test what is suspected to be a Taepodong-2 missile, which at full capacity can reach as far as the U.S. west coast, has put its neighbors, including China, on alert as it may also destroy international efforts to peacefully resolve the prolonged dispute over the North's nuclear weapons program.
Earlier reports said China's Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, also the country's top negotiator in international talks on ending the North Korean nuclear dispute peacefully, has proposed an unofficial meeting of negotiators from the multinational nuclear disarmament talks.
The three-year-old discussions are also attended by South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The latest North Korean nuclear crisis erupted in late 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of their 1994 agreement, in which the energy-starved North agreed to freeze all of its nuclear activities in return for heavy oil and two light-water reactors.
Seoul, July 4 (Yonhap News)
Top N. Korean, Chinese officials to exchange visits |
