“I’m sooo sorry!”
The AP (via Breitbart) reports that Kim Jong-Il has apologized to a Chinese envoy for North Korea’s nuclear test.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed regret about his country’s nuclear test to a Chinese delegation and said Pyongyang would return to international nuclear talks if Washington backs off a campaign to financially isolate the country, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.
“If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks,” Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, the mass- circulation Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a diplomatic source in China.
Kim told the Chinese delegation that “he is sorry about the nuclear test,” the newspaper reported.
The delegation led by State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan met Kim on Thursday and returned to Beijing later that day _ ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s arrival in the Chinese capital Friday. China is viewed as a key nation in efforts to persuade the North to disarm, as it is the isolated communist nation’s main trading partner.
That is of course very much unlike Kim Jong-Il. So, one might wonder, what happened the last couple of days? The Telegraph has the answer: China told not to carry out second nuclear test:
China delivered a blunt message to North Korea yesterday when it told its leader, Kim Jong-il, that he must not proceed with a second nuclear weapons test.
After China’s state media suggested for the first time that Beijing might sever North Korea’s oil supplies, a move which could conceivably precipitate the collapse of Kim’s regime, a senior envoy arrived in Pyongyang to hand down a “personal message” from China’s president, Hu Jintao.
And suddenly it all makes sense.
Kim thought that he would be able to – once again – blackmail the world. It now seems that China, NK’s big brother, decided to put an end to it. China does not want Kim’s regime to fall, but on the other hand, it does not want a neighbor that’s destabilizing the region and causing South Korea and Japan to develop nuclear weapons either.
Let’s now hope that China will continue this new, tough approach towards North Korea. Kim Jong-Il knows that he is finished at the moment China withdraws its support from him.
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