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China and the United States looked set for a stand-off over North Korea after Beijing signalled it would take a softer line on sanctions against the North for testing an atom bomb.
Just hours before more UN Security Council talks on a US draft resolution to tighten the screws on Pyongyang for its nuclear test, China said it wanted to resolve the crisis peacefully rather than aim for exacting revenge.
“Punishment is not the goal,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said. “As to what measures to take, I think the measures themselves are not punitive action.”
Liu's comments appeared to take an easier line than Beijing took earlier in the week, when it called the nuclear test a brazen act that defied the rest of the world and said it would support “punitive” measures against Pyongyang.
In contrast, the United States had said it was “talking about really making it hurt” when it came to Council sanctions — and the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, acknowledged Wednesday that differences remained.
“There are still areas of disagreement,” Bolton said.
He said he hoped the Council would take action by Friday, but lingering disputes on just how harshly to punish the North could delay any vote. China and Russia, both veto-holding Council members, usually oppose sanctions.
North Korea said Wednesday it would regard any tough new sanctions from the Council as a “declaration of war,” and China's spokesman underlined Beijing's wish not to push Pyongyang too far.
Liu said it was “necessary to express” that the nuclear test could not be accepted but added that the international community also had to “maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
The Council was to meet later in the day on the US draft, which includes a tough requirement for the international inspection of cargo in and out of North Korea, as well as financial restrictions and other measures.
Washington fears that the North, known to have supplied missiles to nations hostile to the United States, might make sensitive nuclear technology or other weaponry available to anti-US groups and governments.
Japan has announced its own unilateral sanctions on Pyongyang, including a ban on all North Korean imports, which drew swift condemnation and a sharp warning from the communist regime Thursday if Tokyo put them into effect.
“We will take strong countermeasures,” Song Il-Ho, the North's ambassador in charge of normalizing relations with Tokyo, told Japan's Kyodo News.
“The specific contents will become clear if you keep watching. We never speak empty words,” he said. The new Japanese sanctions await final approval from the cabinet on Friday.
North Korea said Wednesday that full-scale sanctions by the Security Council would be tantamount to a “declaration of war.”
Pyongyang says its nuclear weapons programme is needed to deter an attack by the United States, which lumped the North in with Iran and pre-war Iraq as an “axis of evil.”
It said Monday's test was an attempt to get the United States back to the bargaining table, an apparent call for one-to-one talks instead of the stalled six-nation negotiations on its nuclear ambitions.
But US President George W. Bush, who is also trying to stop Islamic Iran from developing an atom bomb, ruled out direct talks with the North, one of the most impoverished and isolated nations in the world.
The six-way talks — between North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia — led to a pledge last year that the North would abandon its weapons programme in exchange for aid and security guarantees.
But Pyongyang abandoned that deal and boycotted further talks two months later after the United States slapped sanctions on a Macau bank that it said was laundering money for the North Korean regime.
Those sanctions are generally believed to have had a serious impact on the finances of the hermit state, which has repeatedly insisted it would not return to the talks until they are lifted.
Meanwhile South Korea, which says the world must take its position into account when the international community takes action on the North, said it wanted a firm US commitment of nuclear protection in security talks next week.
Before those annual talks, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun was heading to Beijing for a summit Friday with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
There are around 29,500 US troops alongside around 650,000 South Korean forces in the South, who face off against 1.2 million North Korean soldiers across one of the most heavily militarised borders in the world.
Pyongyang on Thursday again claimed that the United States was making plans along with Seoul for an invasion.
