SOUTH KOREA: South Korea has said it is prepared for a worst-case scenario, including war on the peninsula, if diplomacy fails to resolve the crisis over the North's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
At the same time, the top US envoy for Asia said in Beijing yesterday the whole international community agreed that the Korean peninsula must be free of nuclear weapons but held out little hope of a speedy outcome.
"It's going to be a slow process to make sure we achieve this in the right way," the US Assistant Secretary of State, Mr James Kelly, told reporters after talks with Chinese leaders. Mr Kelly spoke hours after Pyongyang scornfully dismissed as "pie in the sky" US offers of possible food and energy aid if the impoverished North would halt its nuclear programme.
In Seoul, the South Korean Defence Minister, Mr Lee Jun, told parliament that war would be unavoidable if diplomacy failed.
"If the North Korean nuclear problem cannot be solved peacefully and America attacks North Korea, war on the Korean peninsula will be unavoidable," Mr Lee said. "Our army is prepared for the worst-case scenario."
However, Japan's foreign minister and South Korea's president-elect have said they see signs it wants talks to end the crisis.
Mr Kelly, flitting between Asian capitals to drum up support for Washington's stance on North Korea, said he had held "very good" talks with officials from China, one of Pyongyang's few allies. "We're going to have to talk more together and communicate with other people, including North Korea, very very clearly, so we all agree on the end results," he said.
Mr Kelly left China for Singapore as Russia's chief Asia expert, Mr Alexander Losyukov, prepared to fly to Beijing and then to Pyongyang where he was to discuss Moscow's proposals on the crisis.
An Australian diplomatic delegation has also been in the North Korean capital this week, seeking to find a way out of the impasse. However a visiting British Foreign Office minister said in Hongkong on yesterday that he believed Pyongyang wanted to deal exclusively with Washington.
North Korea triggered the crisis last month when it threw out UN atomic inspectors. Last week, it pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.