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China offers help ease nuke tension

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Dec. 29. Even as North Korea and the U.S. have indicated that they would not be averse to drawing the battlelines in their confrontation over Pyongyang's ``sovereign right'' to develop nuclear weapons, a few East Asian powers have begun a new round of diplomatic efforts to try and resolve the issue peacefully.

China, whose friendship with North Korea is of critical importance, confirmed late on Saturday night that proactive diplomacy was still being pursued "to ease tension'' that had snowballed over Pyongyang's latest decision to `unfreeze' a nuclear reactor that could yield weapons-grade plutonium.

Emphasising that China was "deeply concerned'' over the turn of events on the U.S.-North Korea front, the Chinese spokesman, Liu Jianchao, maintained that Beijing still considered the Agreed Framework (AF) of 1994 to be ``conducive to the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula''.

All the relevant parties, including the U.S. and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), still bore `responsibility' to ``abide by the agreement''.

The significance of a statement was that China would like the U.S. to look at both sides of the balance sheet over the implementation of the AF of 1994.

China's message was that an approach might still help reverse the rocketing tensions.

The Chinese initiative acquires importance amid indications that a U.S. envoy might engage in some form of shuttle diplomacy in North Korea's neighbourhood early in the New Year.

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