U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to push China to take more action to address North Korea’s recent nuclear test and try to ease tensions around Beijing’s claim on the South China Sea, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
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Kerry declined to be more specific about what he’ll be talking about with the Chinese, saying those talks should be private and he doesn’t want to predetermine the discussions.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said views of common interest are to be discussed during Kerry’s visit, and that China hopes meetings would strengthen communication between the two countries.
“The leader of the opposition party is out of the country, so Secretary Kerry will meet with not only the government but also the opposition”, said the State Department official.
The Cambodian Center for Human Rights has urged Kerry “to make any strengthening of bilateral relations with Cambodia contingent on the government’s significant progress in the promotion of democratic reforms and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”.
He is now in Laos to discuss the upcoming Special US-ASEAN Summit scheduled for next month in the Californian resort of Sunnylands.
Fresh from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Kerry hailed growing economic, environmental and security co-operation, as well as Laos’ chairmanship of ASEAN, as the “defining” issues of a new friendship. Under the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” policy, Hillary Clinton, Kerry’s predecessor, paid two official visits to Cambodia. Vientiane, the capital, will in turn host Mr. Obama at an ASEAN meeting this summer, when he will become the first USA president ever to visit the country.
Another focal point during the talks will be the maritime dispute in the South China Sea, where China and others in the Asia-Pacific region, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have overlapping claims.
In the past Hun Sen has also condemned the devastating US bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and has called for the U.S.to cancel millions of dollars of “dirty” debt incurred by Cambodia in the early 1970s, before the Khmer Rouge came to power.
Kerry’s visit to the landlocked nation of fewer than 7 million people was meant to pave the way for the summit, with a goal of making sure Laos holds the group.
It is important to “cut off avenues of proliferation and retard North Korea’s ability to gain the wherewithal to advance its nuclear and its missile programs”, the State Department official said. Since North Korea’s nuclear test earlier this month, USA officials asserted that China must use its leverage to demand that the Stalinist North Korean leadership end its nuclear weapons program and testing and return to six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.
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The official said the US wants the Chinese to line up with Seoul, Washington and Tokyo in convincing North Korea that the peaceful way forward is to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions but “continuing down the road of provocation is a dead-end street”.
