China Moves to Steady Ties With North Korea Before Trump-Kim Meeting
May 3, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
Beijing has suspected that Washington might agree to put aside its nuclear disagreements with North Korea and accept the North’s nuclear capabilities if it served to contain China, he said.
Mr. Wang could have delivered a careful message, reminding the North that China was its true friend despite the rough patch in the past six years since Mr. Kim came to power, said Xia Yafeng, a Chinese historian at Long Island University.
“Wang Yi had a mission: to coordinate with the North Koreans on how to talk with Trump,” he said. “He can advise the North Koreans, but he cannot threaten them. He may say: ‘Be careful when you talk with Trump. We will always side with you.’”
China grudgingly went along with Washington’s demand last year that it support United Nations sanctions meant to deny the North of critical foreign currency from sales of coal, minerals, seafood and garments.
But Beijing’s desire to punish North Korea’s economy is probably wavering, Mr. Zhao said.
“I can imagine China taking additional measures to further improve ties with North Korea,” Mr. Zhao said. These would include working to connect North Korea to roads and rail networks in northeast Asia, and embracing the North in its Belt and Road Initiative.
There are already signs that China is trying to loosen some of the economic restrictions. Businessmen in the area of northeastern China that borders North Korea say that some North Korean workers are returning to China on short-term visas, and that they expect trade to pick up soon.
Credit
Korean Central News Agency
“I can imagine China already starting studies into options to increase economic cooperation with North Korea in areas that would not violate existing United Nations Security Council resolutions,” Mr. Zhao said.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Beijing was miffed and surprised at being pointedly excluded from several items in the joint declaration that North and South Korea issued last Friday at the end of their summit meeting.
The two Koreas said they would start talks with Washington to negotiate a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, which ravaged the peninsula from 1950 to 1953.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
The declaration mentioned “trilateral or quadrilateral” talks. If the talks were “trilateral” that would include North and South Korea and the United States but not China, which sent millions of troops to fight on North Korea’s side during the war. China withdrew all its troops in 1958.
“The Chinese heard it was North Korea that got the talks to be broadened to quadrilateral,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy.
Beyond that, China was not invited to send observers to the planned destruction of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea at the end of this month. Mr. Kim said he would invite South Korean and American experts to witness the shutdown, a gesture that American officials said would have little impact on the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“The test site is close to the Chinese border,” Mr. Haenle said. “The Chinese were upset because China is a nuclear power, South Korea is not.”
Despite these snubs, the visit of the foreign minister, Mr. Wang, was symbolically important, Mr. Xia said.
In the heyday of the China-North Korea relationship when Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was in power, top-level visits between the two countries were frequent. The grandfather visited China many times, Mr. Xia said. Even Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, made seven trips between 2000 and 2011.
The parade of visits stopped after the young Mr. Kim came to power and derailed the relationship to China by ordering the killing of senior Korean officials close to Beijing.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Mr. Kim made a surprise visit to Beijing in late March, apparently on his own initiative, maneuvering in a way that made him look less like a supplicant and more like an equal.
Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Kim is likely to take place in the Demilitarized Zone at the border between South and North Korea, Mr. Trump has said. Some diplomats are speculating that the two leaders may meet on the northern side of the zone, drawing a distinction with the summit meeting last week on the South Korean side, and satisfying Mr. Trump’s desire for drama.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to go to Pyongyang after the Trump-Kim meeting. One of the foreign minister’s duties was to confirm details of Mr. Xi’s visit, Chinese analysts said.
Continue reading the main story
Share and Enjoy
Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen’s $130000 payment to Stormy Daniels, Giuliani says
May 3, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
Giuliani, for his part, said on Wednesday night that the payment is “going to turn out to be perfectly legal.”
“That money was not campaign money,” he said of Trump’s reimbursement to Cohen. “Sorry — I’m giving you a fact that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money — no campaign finance violation.”
Giuliani told The New York Times later Wednesday evening that after the presidential campaign, Cohen was reimbursed $460,000 or $470,000 in $35,000-a-month installments through a Trump family account for having “settled several problems” for the president.
Giuliani said he was “not clear” whether Trump was aware of the payments to Daniels when they were made, according to The Times.
“I don’t think he did [know] until now,” Giuliani said. “That removes the campaign finance violation, and we have all the documentary proof for it.”
In an interview with The Washington Post Wednesday night, Giuliani also said the president was “very pleased” that the former New York mayor had made public the additional details of the payments and that he and Trump had discussed the plan for the revelation in advance.
“He was well-aware that at some point when I saw the opportunity, I was going to get this over with,” Giuliani said, responding to a question about whether Trump was “angry” with him for the revelation.
Meanwhile, Norm Eisen, chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a nonprofit group that has filed a complaint with the Justice Department over the payment to Daniels, suggested Wednesday night on Twitter that Trump still may have broken the law “by failing to disclose the loan from Cohen on his federal presidential financial disclosures.”
As recently as last month, Trump denied that he had been aware at the time that Cohen had paid Daniels.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One in April, the president said not only that he hadn’t known about the payment but also that he didn’t know where the money had come from.