For three consecutive days in recent weeks, oil stopped flowing through the pipeline from north-east China to North Korea, temporarily cutting off a vital lifeline for Pyongyang. The shutdown followed an unusually blunt message from China to its long-time ally in a high-level meeting in Beijing last month, sources said. Stop your provocation about the possible development of nuclear weapons, China warned its neighbour, or face Chinese support for economic sanctions.
| Ummm... That's blunt. Guess the Chinese realize that their vaunted subtlty is lost on the NKors... |
Such tough tactics show an unexpected resolve in Beijing's policy towards Pyongyang and hint at the nervousness of Chinese leaders about North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the reclusive state's tensions with the US, the Baltimore Sun reported. With the Bush administration asking China to take a more active role, the application of pressure could convince North Korea to drop its demands for talks exclusively with the US — a demand rejected by Washington. Analysts say China is increasingly concerned that a nuclear-armed North Korea would destabilise the region. "When you talk with Chinese officials, ask them, 'Are you okay with nuclear weapons in Taiwan? In Japan?'" Mr Park Syung Je, a North Korea expert at the Institute for Peace Affairs in Seoul, told the newspaper. "I don't think so."
| With NKor frothing at the mouth and waving nukes, they'll be seeing both of those bad dreams come true within a relatively short time. And being genuinely industrialzed states, both Japan and Taiwan could whip them up in considerably less time than it's taking the Koreans... |
Two sources — both veterans in diplomacy with North Korea — said that last month Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Wang Yi met North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun in Beijing and made a strikingly candid plea for Pyongyang to curtail its provocative behaviour. If Pyongyang did not, Mr Wang told the North's minister, China might drop its long-standing position against sanctions. The exact wording of that threat is unknown and it is not clear how seriously Mr Paek took the threat. But the pipeline shutdown that followed would have caught North Korea's attention. |