TEHRAN, December 20-Any delay in joint military drills with the United States would depend on North Korea’s behavior during the 2018 Winter Olympics, officials in Seoul said on Wednesday, while a halt to group tours from China suggested Beijing is still wary.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) -Any delay in joint military drills with the United States would depend on North Korea’s behavior during the 2018 Winter Olympics, officials in Seoul said on Wednesday, while a halt to group tours from China suggested Beijing is still wary.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in is seeking to soothe relations with China and the North before the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February and suggested on Tuesday he was prepared to postpone the drills with the United States.
Pyongyang sees the joint exercises as preparation for war, while Beijing is still angry about the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system, commonly known as THAAD, by South Korea.
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China believes the system’s powerful radar can see far into its territory, but Seoul argues it needs it to guard against the threat posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.
Seoul has proposed the potential delay in drills to Washington, which was also discussed during a summit last week between Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping, an official from the presidential Blue House in Seoul said on Wednesday.
China has in the past proposed a “freeze for freeze” arrangement under which North Korea would stop its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a halt to the exercises. However, Washington has rejected the idea and Pyongyang has shown little interest in negotiations.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Ottawa on Tuesday he was unaware of any plans to “alter longstanding and scheduled and regular military exercises”.
North Korea has stepped up its missile and nuclear tests to an unprecedented rate this year, and any new provocation from the North would “inevitably have an impact” on the exercises, the Blue House official said.
“It is a display of the president’s strong message that North Korea must not conduct any provocation (during the Olympics),” the official told reporters.
TOUGHER SANCTIONS
North Korea has been hit with increased international sanctions over its missile and nuclear tests this year.
Japan’s Asahi newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing an unidentified person connected to South Korean intelligence, that North Korea was conducting biological weapons experiments to test the possibility of loading anthrax-laden warheads on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The Asahi report said the U.S. government was aware of the tests, which were meant to ascertain whether the anthrax bacteria could survive the high temperatures that occur during warheads re-entry from space.
Source: Reuters
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