China Shows Willingness to Punish North Korea for TestBy JOHN O’NEIL and CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: October 10, 2006China said today that it would support appropriate “punitive actions” against North Korea in response to its announcement of a nuclear test, a harsher step than it has been willing to take in the past.
The country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, told reporters that “there has to be some punitive actions, but also I think that these actions have to be appropriate.”
He said that the council needed to have a “firm, constructive, appropriate but prudent response to North Korea’s nuclear threat,” according to news services.
It was not clear whether Mr. Guangya’s remarks meant that China would support the resolution proposed by the United States, which calls for international inspections of all cargo going in or out of North Korea.
But the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, gave an upbeat assessment of the Security Council’s talks on North Korea today, even as he and other Bush administration officials sought to fend off criticism that North Korea’s apparent entry into the ranks of nuclear nations represented a failure of American policy.
In Beijing, Chinese officials had earlier reiterated their condemnation of the regime in Pyongyang, although a foreign ministry spokesman said that military action on the issue was “unimaginable.” President Hu Jintao called on all countries to “avoid actions that may lead to escalation or loss of control of the situation,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.
