Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan, sent to Pyongyang to mediate a breakthrough in North Korean nuclear talks earlier this month, spent 20 minutes enumerating to the North's top leader all that Beijing has done for Pyongyang in the past as a means to press the ally to come back to negotiations, a Washington insider said Thursday.
Chris Nelson, author of the widely read political tip sheet "Nelson Report," said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il then apologized, not for conducting the nuclear test as reported by some media, but for upsetting Beijing.
"He said something to the effect that 'I am sorry you've been inconvenienced by our decision,'" he said at a lecture sponsored by the South Korean Embassy.
Nelson files daily briefings on inside information pooled from his conversations with government and non-government sources. The subscribers run broadly from business to political and foreign affairs communities.
He said discussions about whether North Korea will conduct more nuclear tests were held at the staff level.
"I am told that it was a lower but very important staff level conversation involving (North Korean deputy foreign minister) Kim Kye-gwan and other Chinese senior officials, saying that if we (North Korea) test again, it's because Americans are still being hostile," said Nelson.
North Korea detonated a nuclear device on Oct. 9, the first atomic test since its declaration in February last year that it possessed nuclear weapons.
Tang, a state councilor, has shuttled from Washington to Moscow and to Pyongyang since, trying to resolve the crisis.
South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan are members of the six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. The negotiations haven't convened for a year due to Pyongyang's protest against the U.S. Treasury's punitive actions against a Macau bank accused of laundering money for North Korea.
Pyongyang insists the actions must be lifted before it will return to the talks.
Washington, Oct. 26 (Yonhap News)
Chinese envoy pressured N.K. by reminding all Beijing had done for P'yang: Nelson |
