Word: pyongyang
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...Moon received word last week that North Korea might be planning to test a nuclear device, he had reason to be anxious. As South Korea's Foreign Minister, Ban is a key player in the six-party talks aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear program. A test would scuttle those talks and likely lead to a renewed U.S. push for sanctions against North Korea. And so in the middle of Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving, Ban, 62, was on the phone to his counterparts in Moscow, Beijing, Washington and Tokyo, building a response...
...preferred either Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga or former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, but both were vetoed by other permanent Security Council members. Washington's reluctance was due in part to South Korea's growing coziness with China and by Seoul's "sunshine policy" of engagement with Pyongyang. The U.S. is skeptical that Ban, long careful to avoid stepping on toes, would really be willing to challenge the entrenched interests inside the U.N. that are opposed to reform...
...going through a very important transformation period, but our relationship is very sound and healthy." So far, reaction to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's announcement of a planned nuclear test has been unified, with even China, the closest country North Korea has to an ally, warning Pyongyang that a test would bring "serious consequences." Ban is so intent on resolving the North Korean dispute that he says he might visit Pyongyang himself as Secretary-General?something Annan never did. "Having known all the history and background and having known people in both the South and the North...
...North Korea's announcement of the successful underground detonation of a nuclear weapon has called Washington's bluff. President Bush had long warned that the U.S. will not "tolerate" a nuclear-armed North Korea, and just last week his chief negotiator with the hermit regime, Christopher Hill, warned that Pyongyang would have to choose between having nuclear weapons and having a future. Monday morning's announced test suggests that Kim Jong-il has decided to test Washington's "or else...
...that North Korea submit to denuclearization under international supervision. China and South Korea will likely back the principle that North Korea must be punished for crossing a red line, but their aversion to sanctions is based on fears of potentially cataclysmic chaos accompanying the collapse of the regime in Pyongyang, and those fears won't have been eased by the regime's demonstration of a capacity to lash out with nuclear weapons if it is being choked to death. Given North Korea's huge standing army and the vulnerability of South Korea to its conventional artillery and missile capability...