WASHINGTON – A top United States official for North Korea held a video call this week with China’s envoy on Korean peninsula affairs in which they discussed the growing military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, the State Department said on Feb 23.
Ms Jung Pak, the US senior official for North Korea, and her Chinese counterpart Liu Xiaoming also addressed North Korea’s “increasingly destabilising and escalatory behaviour”, the department said in a statement.
It said the growing military cooperation between Russia and North Korea was “in violation of numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions”.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said it was “in the common interest of the region and the international community to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and push forward the process of political settlement”.
It said the “parties concerned should... address each other’s concerns in a balanced manner through meaningful dialogue”, and that China and the US agreed to maintain contact on the issue.
The Chinese statement made no mention of Russia, which has long been party to UN sanctions on North Korea over the latter’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes but has stepped up ties with Pyongyang since invading Ukraine in 2022.
Washington has accused North Korea of supplying Russia with artillery shells and missiles used in Ukraine.
Moscow and Pyongyang deny this but have vowed to deepen military relations.
The US statement said the call with China followed a Feb 16 meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in which they “affirmed the importance of continued communication on (North Korea) issues at all levels”.
The Kremlin on Feb 20 said Russian President Vladimir Putin had given North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a Russian Aurus limousine as a gift.
On Feb 23, Washington imposed sanctions on the producer of the car as part of a sweeping round of sanctions against Russia to mark the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions and trade restrictions also targeted Chinese companies that the US said were assisting Russia’s war.
China-US relations have shown signs of improvement in recent months, with steps to re-establish communication channels after ties sank to their lowest levels in decades.
But many points of friction remain, including US sanctions on China over security and human rights issues. Mr Wang told Mr Blinken these should be lifted.
The spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, Mr Liu Pengyu, called the latest sanctions against Chinese firms “a typical move of economic coercion, unilateralism and bullying”.
Ms Bonnie Jenkins, the top US official for arms control, told an event on Feb 22 that Washington was keen for more talks with China on strategic stability and crisis management, and that a more aggressive North Korea was not in Beijing’s interest.
Ms Jenkins said she believed North Korea, which borders China, is keen to acquire fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, armoured vehicles, ballistic missile production equipment or materials and other advanced technologies from its cooperation with Russia. REUTERS
