Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing fail to agree joint statement on N.K.


BEIJING -- President Lee Myung-bak and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao agreed to cooperate on devising measures to address North Korea’s jamming of satellite traffic navigation signals during their talks here on Monday.

The leaders exchanged their views on the safety of passenger flight operations in South Korea, China and Japan, said Kim Tae-hyo, senior presidential secretary for national security.

In recent weeks, hundreds of aircraft and ships in South Korea have been affected by Global Position System disruptions, which Seoul authorities claim were caused by the North’s electric jamming waves.

No serious damage has yet been caused by the North’s jamming of satellite signals in the South.

Their bilateral talks came a day after Lee, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao discussed ways to deepen trilateral cooperation in security, business, trade and other regional and global issues.

North Korea topped the security agenda of the talks between Lee and Hu.

The two agreed to closely cooperate to effectively address the issue of North Korean provocations and smoothly resolve the issue of defectors from the North, whom Beijing has forcibly repatriated under a decades-old deal with Pyongyang.

“Should North Korea possess a nuclear weapon and long-range missile, the dialogue between the two Koreas and between the North and China will enter a different phase,” Lee was quoted by Kim as saying during the talks.

Hu, in turn, expressed his opposition against Pyongyang’s provocative moves.

“China has an unequivocal position on its goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. We oppose North Korea’s nuclear test and a launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile,” he was quoted by Kim as saying.

Meanwhile, the leaders of South Korea, Japan and China failed Monday to mention North Korea in their joint statement following a three-way summit.

The declaration coming from the annual meeting on Sunday made no reference to Pyongyang. A warning against further North Korean provocations had been expected.

Seoul officials denied there were disagreements on the issue.

“There were no significant differences in warning against North Korea’s provocations. But due to sensitivity of the issue, it was not in the joint announcement,” Kim Tae-hyo, senior presidential secretary for national security strategy, told reporters.

The 50-point declaration confirmed their agreement on cooperation in business, trade, security and other issues.

During the trilateral summit on Sunday, the three countries agreed to start official negotiations on a trilateral FTA within this year, stepping up efforts to deepen their economic cooperation.

The envisioned pact would create one of the world’s largest economic blocs, comparable to the EU and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The three countries’ combined population amounts to some 1.5 billion, more than a fifth of the world’s total. Their gross domestic product amounts to $12 trillion, some 20 percent of the world’s total.

Earlier this month, Seoul and Beijing declared the beginning of bilateral FTA negotiations.

By Song Sang-ho, Korea Herald correspondent
(sshluck@heraldcorp.com)