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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Pyongyang to press North Korea not to restart its nuclear arms project - Source: Reuters -
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will press North Korea
not to restart its nuclear arms project and return to disarmament
talks when he meets officials in Pyongyang after arriving for a
two-day visit.
"Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov, foreign minister of the Russian
Federation, and his party arrived here today," the North's official
KCNA news agency said in a typically brief dispatch.
North Korea kicked out UN nuclear inspectors and threatened to
resume operations at a nuclear plant that makes bomb-grade
plutonium last week after the UN Security Council condemned the
North for launching a long-range rocket on April 5.
Frustration with North Korea has been growing after Pyongyang said
it was quitting six-party nuclear disarmament talks and nullifying
agreements reached with South Korea, the United States, Japan,
Russia and China since their start in 2003.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday Washington
wanted the six-party talks among those countries to resume and
urged the world to not give in to the North's unpredictable
behaviour.
Lavrov said he would try to press the North to return to the talks
and expected Pyongyang to do so, Interfax news agency said on
Wednesday.
South Korea's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said it will be some
time before the North can restart operation of its Yongbyon nuclear
plant about 100 km north of Pyongyang and the facility there to
obtain more plutonium for weapons.
"That will be squarely against all the pledges made by the North
for denuclearisation made through the six-way talks and it will
reinforce the need to rigorously enforce UN Security Council
resolution 1718," Yu told a briefing on Thursday.
That 2006 resolution called for arms and financial sanctions
against the North.
The Security Council censure this month calls for punishment
under that resolution.
In rare talks with Seoul, North Korea on Tuesday refused to discuss
the fate of a South Korean worker it had been holding for almost a
month for allegedly insulting its political system, and demanded
higher wages and rent from firms that operate factories in an
industrial enclave in its territory.
North Korea, angered by the decision of South Korean President Lee
Myung-bak after he took office a year ago to cut a steady flow of
aid to his impoverished neighbour, has disrupted work at the
Kaesong factory park to put pressure on Seoul to drop its hard
line.
In the most dramatic case, the North may move to shut down the
Kaesong project, said Cho Myung-chul, a former economist in the
North who defected to the South about 15 years ago who is now with
Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul.
"North Korea is not a type of country that would sacrifice its
political interests for economic interests," he said.
Lavrov is scheduled to visit Seoul on Friday.
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