China expressed worry on Tuesday about a US-led initiative that some governments hope will prevent nuclear weapons proliferation from North Korea, saying the effort may stray from international law. A Foreign Ministry spokesman also confirmed that a senior Chinese official had called off a visit to North Korea, citing a scheduling conflict.
The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) was created by the Bush administration in 2003 in an attempt to stifle trade in weapons of mass destruction. Following North Korea's nuclear test on May 25, South Korea said it would join the ad hoc alliance, and Pyongyang promptly threatened to attack the South if it tried to search North Korean vessels under the programme.
But China has remained aloof from the PSI, and Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the initiative risked departing from international law. Those comments from Beijing, a key player in the nuclear crisis and neighbour of North Korea, are likely to mean PSI actions will remain heavily limited.
"China understands the PSI member countries' concerns about proliferation and approves the anti-proliferation intent of PSI, but we express concern about the possibility of it taking action entirely outside of international law," Qin told a news conference. "The reservations or anxieties about PSI shared by China as well as other countries are precisely that some of its rules stand outside of international law and the framework of the UN Charter."
China has a 1,416-km (880-mile) border with North Korea, and Beijing's co-operation would be crucial to making PSI action against Pyongyang bite. But Qin's comments underscored how unlikely that prospect remains. Some experts have argued that an earlier UN resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea after its 2006 nuclear test appears to give PSI a firm legal basis to intercept North Korean shipments. But others, clearly now including China, disagree.
China's wariness of PSI comes during other signs that the government is trying to calibrate its actions to pressure North Korea without necessarily embracing the tough sanctions that Japan and other nations have urged. Qin said that Chen Zhili, a vice chairwoman of China's National People's Congress, had postponed a visit to North Korea "because of her domestic schedule". China's state-owned media have been less circumspect about their neighbour, piling criticism on Pyongyang.
Yet the government may not be so forceful when the UN Security Council considers fresh sanctions against the North, long seen by China as an important but brittle strategic buffer against the US and its allies. In 2006, China backed a UN resolution condemning the North's first nuclear test. But it fended off demands for sanctions that could choke its economic lifeline to Pyongyang. "China will be extremely cautious about new sanctions this time," Liu Jiangyong, an expert on East Asian security at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told Reuters. "China won't agree to excessive sanctions that would only stoke conflict with North Korea," Liu said.
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