Russia is ready to act as a mediator between North Korea and the United States if both parties are willing for it to play such a role, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
Moscow has long called for the two sides to hold negotiations aimed at reducing tensions over the nuclear and missile programme North Korea is pursuing in defiance of years of UN Security Council resolutions.
‘Russia’s readiness to clear the way for de-escalation is obvious,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a phone call with reporters, suggesting President Vladimir Putin could be called in as an unlikely peacekeeper between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump.
Russia is ready to act as a mediator between North Korea and the United States if both parties are willing for it to play such a role, the Kremlin said on Tuesday
‘Russia’s readiness to clear the way for de-escalation is obvious,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a phone call with reporters, suggesting President Vladimir Putin could be called in as an unlikely peacekeeper between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Monday for Washington and Pyongyang to start negotiations, saying Russia was ready to facilitate such talks. Though US diplomats have said they are pursuing a diplomatic solution, President Donald Trump has said Pyongyang must commit to giving up its nuclear weapons before any talks can begin
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Monday for Washington and Pyongyang to start negotiations, saying Russia was ready to facilitate such talks.
Though US diplomats have said they are pursuing a diplomatic solution, President Donald Trump has said Pyongyang must commit to giving up its nuclear weapons before any talks can begin.
The UN Security Council unanimously voted to impose new sanctions on North Korea on Friday in response to its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, a move North Korea called an act of war, tantamount to a complete economic blockade.
But the orders have not perturbed the hermit kingdom’s aggression with Kim Jong-un seemingly going one step further than missile launches.
North Korea is preparing to launch a satellite, it has been claimed, as outside observers warn that the nuclear-armed regime’s space programme is likely to be a cover up for more for weapons tests.
South Korean daily newspaper Joongang Ilbo reported: ‘Through various channels, we’ve recently learned that the North has completed a new satellite and named it Kwangmyongsong-5.
‘Their plan is to put a satellite equipped with cameras and telecommunication devices into orbit.’
Vladimir Putin, pictured centre in a pruple tie, stands with a number of his officials in Moscow
South Korea predicted today that their hostile neighbours would look to open negotiations with the United States next year in an optimistic outlook for 2018.
Even so, Seoul has set up a specialised military team to confront nuclear threats from the North.
The Ministry of Defence said it would assign four units to operate under a new official overseeing North Korea policy, aimed to ‘deter and respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat’.
Tensions have risen over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes, which it pursues in defiance of years of UN Security Council resolutions, with bellicose rhetoric coming from both Pyongyang and the White House.
US President Donald Trump (left) shakes hands with China’s President Xi Jinping during a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 9, 2017
In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea said the United States was terrified by its nuclear force and was getting ‘more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country’.
China, the North’s lone major ally, and Russia both supported the latest UN sanctions, which seek to limit the North’s access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad.
In its 2018 forecast, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it believed the North would eventually find ways to blunt the effects of the sanctions.
‘Countermeasures will be orchestrated to deal with the effects, including cuts in trade volume and foreign currency inflow, lack of supplies, and reduced production in each part of the economy,’ the report said.
The latest round of sanctions was prompted by the November 29 test of what North Korea said was an intercontinental ballistic missile that put the US mainland within range of its nuclear weapons.
North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan, and says its weapons are necessary to counter US aggression.
The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, and regularly carries out military exercises with Seoul.
Kim Jong-un interprets this as preparations for invasion.