China refuses to condemn N Korea over naval attack

CHINA HAS swatted away demands from Japan and South Korea to condemn Pyongyang over the sinking of a navy frigate, saying they should instead stop tensions on the Korean Peninsula from escalating into war.

“We have to focus on preventing possible armed clashes between the two sides,” Chinese premier Wen Jiabao reportedly said yesterday during a weekend summit with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak and Japan’s prime minister Yukio Hatoyama.

The annual summit, on the resort island of Jeju off the South Korean coast, was scheduled to discuss mainly trade issues before it was hijacked by the Korean crisis.

Beijing has steadfastly resisted pressure to fall into line behind the US and its allies in demanding sanctions against North Korea for allegedly torpedoing the Cheonanwarship on March 26th.

Yesterday’s refusal is likely to anger South Korea, which needs Chinese support when it takes the incident before the UN Security Council next month. Pyongyang’s main trading partner and only major ally, Beijing has a veto over the council’s decisions.

Washington and Seoul have already begun working on fresh sanctions targeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s personal funds, including a shadowy department of his government called Room 39.

The department earns up to $300 million (€244 million) a year managing offices, 100 trading companies, a gold mine and a bank, according to the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo. The money goes "straight into Kim's overseas bank accounts", the newspaper claims.

Yesterday’s meeting on Jeju took place as about 100,000 people demonstrated against the US and its “puppet” Seoul ally across the border in Pyongyang.

Choe Yong-Rim, chief secretary of the city’s party committee, told the crowd in Kim Il-Sung Square they should prepare for invasion, the South’s Yonyap news agency reported. “President Lee is making a frantic effort to provoke a new war,” the agency quoted him as saying.

Pyongyang denies sinking the warship and says the incident was "cooked up" by Seoul and Washington to start a war. A multinational investigation concluded this month that a North Korean submarine sank the Cheonan, killing 46 South Korean sailors.

Mr Wen will come under renewed pressure today to join the international chorus against Pyongyang when he again meets Mr Hatoyama for bilateral talks in Tokyo. Beijing is wary of provoking its prickly Stalinist neighbour, a point underlined yesterday by Mr Wen, who refused to mention the country by name.

"The urgent task for the moment is to properly handle the serious impact caused by the Cheonanincident, gradually defuse tensions over it and avoid possible conflicts," he said.

The two Koreas had naval skirmishes in 1999, 2002 and November last year.