Beijing – China declared flatly Tuesday that it won’t reduce fuel supplies to North Korea to discourage that country from testing a nuclear weapon.
“We are not in favor of exerting pressure or imposing sanctions. We believe that such measures will not necessarily have an effect,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.
North Korea receives most of its energy through a pipeline from China. Trade between the nations also is rising quickly, providing economic support to the isolated regime of Kim Jong-Il.
Trade relations between China and North Korea – or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as it’s known – shouldn’t be linked to the nuclear issue, Liu said, and won’t be affected by the “worrying developments” on the Korean Peninsula.
“The normal trade links between China and the DPRK will continue,” Liu said.
A senior U.S. diplomat, Christopher Hill, visited Beijing late in April and reportedly asked China to cut off oil deliveries to North Korea as a way to prod the regime back to six-nation disarmament talks.
In the past week, U.S. officials in Washington have cited satellite images indicating that North Korea may be preparing a nuclear test in Kilju, in the northeast of the country.
The images, while not conclusive, show workers closing a tunnel with rock and concrete, consistent with plugging a site for an underground nuclear test, and possibly even preparing a viewing stand.
U.S. intelligence officials, however, say they don’t know whether the North Koreans are planning a test or staging a show in an attempt to force the United States to make concessions.
North Korea formally declared itself a nuclear power on Feb. 10, saying it had “manufactured nuclear weapons” to defend itself from attack by the United States.
Some U.S. officials think that a North Korean nuclear test probably would prompt Japan, South Korea and Russia – all parties to the six-nation talks along with the United States, China and North Korea – to urge the Bush administration to show more flexibility.
A Chinese scholar on North Korea, Jin Linbo, said China’s refusal to cut oil deliveries had raised skepticism abroad about its determination to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, but that the stance was consistent with China’s foreign policy.
“The Chinese government is reluctant to put any kind of pressure on another country, including North Korea. It’s China’s diplomatic philosophy,” said Jin, director of the department of Asia-Pacific studies at the China Institute of International Studies.
China is believed to have cut off oil to North Korea in March 2003 for three days, citing “technical reasons.” The suspension was seen widely as a way to punish North Korea for resisting regional talks on disarmament.
