Seoul’s presidential office declared Sunday that South Korea believed now an untimely juncture for talks. Seoul was responding to a Chinese invitation to hold emergency six-party talks on North Korea.
The six-party talks include the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia and were initially directed to address security concerns in the Korean peninsula and the discussion of North Korea’s nuclear status.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that the president found the time inappropriate to discuss China’s current proposal.
China said that holding the meeting would not be separate from the initial six-party negotiations and would not entail their resumption. North Korea had previously declared in 2009 that it would no longer participate in these negotiations following a worldwide condemnation of its nuclear programme.
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