The United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, on Wednesday called for the ”swift and effective” implementation of United Nations sanctions against North Korea and vowed that Washington would continue to protect its allies in the region amid growing fears of an arms race in the far east.
Rice, in Tokyo on the first leg of a hastily arranged trip that will take in South Korea, China and Russia, urged countries in the region to support UN sanctions, which include inspections of North Korean cargo for nuclear materials.
”This is an especially important time for allies to work together,” Rice told reporters after talks with Taro Aso, the Japanese Foreign Minister. The US is expected to find it more difficult to persuade China to cooperate. Chinese support is seen as crucial to pressuring Pyongyang to return to negotiations, but Beijing has said it will stop short of boarding North Korean ships.
Rice also sought to allay Chinese concerns that the sanctions would prompt a humanitarian crisis and a flood of refugees from North Korea. ”This is not an embargo or a quarantine,” she said. ”The US has no desire to escalate this crisis. In fact we would like to see it de-escalate.”
Her visit is also designed to reassure Japan that it can depend on the US for its security. ”Obviously an event of this kind does carry with it the potential for instability in the relationships that now exist in the region,” she said. ”That’s why it’s extremely important to go out and to affirm, and affirm strongly, US defence commitments to Japan and South Korea.”
Last Monday’s underground test has prompted Japan, which considers itself high on Pyongyang’s list of potential targets, to talk openly about the merits of developing its own nuclear deterrent.
After the talks Aso said Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, was ”absolutely not considering a need to be armed by nuclear weapons”.
”We do not need to acquire nuclear arms with an assurance by [Rice] that the bilateral alliance would work without fault,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â