SEOUL: North Korea rejected offers of talks from the South during a rare exchange between the two rivals’ foreign ministers, Seoul’s Yonhap news agency reported Monday after the UN imposed a new round of sanctions on nuclear-armed Pyongyang.
News of the brief encounter on the sidelines of a regional forum in Manila came as the South’s President Moon Jae-In urged a “peaceful resolution” to the tensions in a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Donald Trump.
Even a conventional conflict on the peninsula could could cost a million dead or wounded within months, estimates say.
Moon told Trump the South “cannot let another war to break out” on the peninsula after the 1950-53 Korean War that sealed the division of two Koreas, the presidential Blue House said in a statement.
The South’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-Wha shook hands with her Northern counterpart Ri Yong-Ho ahead of an ASEAN Regional Forum dinner on Sunday, Yonhap said.
Kang urged Ri to accept Seoul’s offers of military talks to lower tensions on the divided peninsula, and for discussions on a new round of reunions for divided families.
But Ri retorted: “Given the current situation in which the South collaborates with the US to heap pressure on the North, such proposals lacked sincerity,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
Kang reiterated again “the South’s sincerity” and repeated a call for Pyongyang to come forward for talks, the official said.
It was the first time cabinet-level officials from the two Koreas had met since Moon — who urges engagement with the North as well as sanctions to bring it to the negotiating table — took power in May.
The encounter came a day after the UN Security Council passed sweeping sanctions on the North over its first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which sparked global alarm.
The growing threat from the nuclear-armed North dominated the annual forum, which came days after the North’s second ICBM test.
The missile launches have added to tensions on the peninsula with the US leaving open the possibility of military action against Kim Jong-Un’s regime.
White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster vowed to “provide all options” on the country in a recent interview with CNN.
But Moon, in a phone conversation with Trump on Monday, urged calm and “peaceful and diplomatic resolution.”
The two allies are due later this month to start an annual joint military drill hated by Pyongyang, which habitually slams it as a rehearsal for invasion.
The White House said the two leaders “affirmed that North Korea poses a grave and growing direct threat to the United States, South Korea, and Japan, as well as to most countries around the world.”
They welcomed the sweeping new sanctions passed by the UN Security Council in a 15-0 vote on Saturday in a bid to step up pressure on Pyongyang over its weapons programs.
The measures ban a wide range of fisheries and mineral exports from the impoverished state in a move aimed at slashing Pyongyang’s foreign revenue by a third.
Trump hailed the vote, thanking Russia and China for backing a measure that either could have halted with their UN veto.
“Just completed call with President Moon of South Korea. Very happy and impressed with 15-0 United Nations vote on North Korea sanctions,” Trump tweeted.
Pyongyang has not officially responded to the latest UN sanctions.
North Korea rejects South’s talks offer: Yonhap
North Korea rejects South’s talks offer: Yonhap
Rubio meets Orbán in Budapest as US and Hungary are to sign a civilian nuclear pact
- Trump has been outspoken in his support for the nationalist Orbán in the Hungarian leader’s bid for reelection in two months
BUDAPEST, Hungary: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in the Hungarian capital on Monday for meetings with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government during which they plan to sign a civilian-nuclear cooperation agreement heralded by US President Donald Trump.
Trump has been outspoken in his support for the nationalist Orbán in the Hungarian leader’s bid for reelection in two months. Orbán and his Fidesz party are facing their most serious challenge in the April 12 vote since the right-wing populist retook power in 2010.
The stop in Hungary’s capital follows Rubio’s visit to Slovakia on Sunday, after he previously attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
Led by Euroskeptic populists who oppose support for Ukraine and vocally back Trump, Slovakia and Hungary represent friendly territory for Rubio as he pushes to shore up energy agreements with both Central European countries.
Widely considered Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most reliable advocate in the European Union, Orbán has maintained warm relations with the Kremlin despite its war against Ukraine while currying favor with Trump and his MAGA — short for the 2016 Trump campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” — movement.
Many in MAGA and the broader conservative world view Hungary as a shining example of successful conservative nationalism, despite the erosion of its democratic institutions and its status as one of the EU’s poorest countries.
In a post on his Truth Social site earlier this month, Trump endorsed Orbán for the coming elections and called him a “truly strong and powerful Leader” and “a true friend, fighter, and WINNER.”
Trump has praised Orbán’s firm opposition to immigration, exemplified by a fence his government erected on Hungary’s southern border in 2015 as hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Syria and other countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Other US conservatives admire Orbán’s hostility to LGBTQ+ rights. His government last year banned the popular Budapest Pride celebration and allowed facial recognition technology to be used to identify anyone participating despite the ban. It has also effectively banned same-sex adoption and same-sex marriage, and disallowed transgender individuals from changing their sex in official documents.
Orbán has remained firmly committed to purchasing Russian energy despite efforts by the EU to wean off such supplies, and received an exemption from US sanctions on Russian energy after a November meeting in the White House with Trump.
Apparently trusting that his political and personal affinity with the US leader could pay even greater dividends, Orbán and his government have sought to woo Trump to Hungary before the pivotal April 12 elections — hoping such a high-profile visit and endorsement would push Orbán, who is trailing in most polls, over the finish line.
Budapest has hosted several annual iterations of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, and another was hastily rescheduled this year to fall in March, just before Hungary’s elections.
