China expected to urge N. Korea not to launch rocket: minister

BEIJING, Feb. 25 (Yonhap) -- China is expected to urge North Korea not to launch
what it claims is a rocket carrying a communications satellite, South Korea's
foreign minister said Wednesday after meetings with top Chinese officials here.
Minister Yu Myung-hwan also said the six-way talks on Pyongyang's nuclear
disarmament will likely resume "before long," adding North Korea has confirmed
"through various diplomatic channels" it understands the need for the
negotiations.
"Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told me he has watched attentively media
reports on North Korea's plan to launch a satellite," Yu told South Korean
journalists in Beijing. "He said that he expects each side to take actions that
contribute to the stabilization of Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula."
Yu said he did not directly ask for Beijing to intervene but said it is "safe" to
interpret Yang's remarks as meaning that China is concerned about North Korea's
recent behavior and will play a role.
"China will convey our message through natural means," Yu said after talks with
Premier Wen Jiabao and Wang Jiarui, a senior Chinese communist party official who
met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il late last month in Pyongyang.
Beijing remains a close ally and the largest donor to impoverished North Korea,
and plays host to the six-party talks that also involve South Korea, the U.S.,
Russia and Japan.
On Tuesday, North Korea announced that full-scale preparations are under way for
sending a satellite into orbit, lending credence to weeks of intelligence reports
that the secretive nation is moving to fire another long-range missile.
The South Korean minister reiterated that the launch -- whether it is a missile
or a satellite -- would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions adopted in 2006
after Pyongyang conducted missile and nuclear tests that year. He emphasized that
the technologies involved in launching a satellite and firing a missile are
virtually the same.
The minister also said he expects the six-way talks to resume in the near future.
The latest round of negotiations ended in a stalemate last December due to a
dispute over how to inspect the North's nuclear sites.
"We expect an active exchange of views between the nations next month," he said.
Meanwhile, Yu said he delivered a message of concern to China over its move to
conduct an anti-dumping probe into Korean petrochemical companies that export
terephthalic acid (TPA), which is used to produce synthetic fibers.
TPA is one of South Korea's major export items to China, worth $2.8 billion a year.
lcd@yna.co.kr
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