U.S. cancels food aid; envoy seeks united front to prevent further provocations


China has reissued its appeal for restraint on the sides of the United States and South Korea over North Korea’s failed rocket launch.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement Sunday, appealing for all sides to “remain calm and exercise restraint.” The ministry said Sunday that Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi talked with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan.

The failed launch Friday heightened tensions in the region, and the U.N. Security Council criticized it as a violation of resolutions that ban North Korea from developing nuclear and missile programs. The United States canceled food aid to the impoverished North.

A U.S. envoy headed to Asia on Saturday saying he would seek a united front to prevent “further provocations” by North Korea after the regime’s defiant rocket launch.

Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, arrived Sunday in Japan before stops in U.S. allies South Korea and Singapore, along with emerging U.S. partner India.

A pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan and the South Korean intelligence service have said the authoritarian state may carry out a third nuclear test, possibly in retaliation for condemnation of its launch.

The U.S. has taken a firm but low-key steps following the launch.

It will not go forward with the already suspended plan to deliver badly needed food assistance to the impoverished country but has not said it would seek a fresh U.N. resolution.

The United States and South Korea believe that North Korea’s rocket, which disintegrated within minutes of takeoff, was a disguised test of a long-range missile.

The United States had already suspended the plan to deliver 240,000 metric tons of assistance aimed at children and pregnant women as North Korea announced a plan to put a satellite in orbit.

“Their efforts to launch a missile clearly demonstrate that they could not be trusted to keep their commitments,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said aboard Air Force One en route to Colombia for the Summit of the Americas.

“Therefore we are not going forward with an agreement to provide them with any assistance.”

Under the Feb. 29 deal aimed at easing longstanding tensions, the U.S. agreed to deliver aid under supervision in the authoritarian state and North Korea said it would freeze its nuclear and missile tests in return.

Mercy Corps, one of five U.S. non-governmental groups that would have delivered the aid, said the assistance would have reached more than 2 million North Korean children and tens of thousands of pregnant women.

Meanwhile, a senior Japanese defense official Saturday urged “crisis-management measures” ahead of a possible nuclear test by North Korea after its humiliating failure to launch a rocket.

“We’d better keep in mind that they may conduct a nuclear test,” Senior Vice Minister of Defense Shu Watanabe told a weekly news programmed on the private TV Tokyo network.

“We must prepare crisis-management measures by remembering that they will surely do something in order to restore their damaged dignity,” he said.

Analysts say satellite imagery showing what looks like preparations, and the communist regime’s previous patterns of behavior ― with missile tests followed by bomb tests ― suggest a third nuclear test could be imminent.

Watanabe said countries should not have high hopes for change under Kim Jong-un.

“The man (North Korean leader Kim Jong-un) is just a beginner of brinksmanship diplomacy. The cronies from the Kim Jong-il era choreograph him. The country will continue to be a source of global instability even after its leaders changed,” he said.

“What we should fear is that they may go ahead with missile and nuclear tests again even though the technologies are inadequate,” he said.

From news reports
(yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)