China envoy brings message to NKorea's Kim
2006-10-19

People Dai Bingguo Tang Jiaxuan Kim Jong Il Hu Jintao Event Korea Nuclear Crisis China-North Korea

A Chinese envoy delivered North Korean leader Kim Jong Il a personal message from China's president on Thursday in the highest-level Chinese visit to its isolated ally since the North's nuclear test last week.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said he had no details of the message conveyed by State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan in Pyongyang but said the visit was "very significant."

Tang, traveling as an envoy for President Hu Jintao, arrived in the North Korean capital on Wednesday amid reports of a possible second test by the North.

Tang and Kim had "in-depth discussions on China-North Korea relations as well as the prevailing situation on the Korean Peninsula," Liu said at a regular news briefing.

"This is a very significant visit, against the backdrop of major changes on the Korean Peninsula," Liu said. "We hope China's diplomatic efforts ... will bear fruit."

Tang, a former foreign minister whose Cabinet post ranks above minister, was accompanied by Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and Wu Dawei, the Chinese envoy to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

Relations between the two longtime communist allies have been frayed recently.

While China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council with power to veto U.N. actions, is traditionally reluctant to punish the North, it voted last weekend for the resolution imposing sanctions for the regime's Oct. 9 nuclear test.

It has since warned its neighbor against any actions -- such as another test -- that would aggravate tensions.

But Beijing's U.N. ambassador has indicated that inspectors will not board ships to search for equipment or material that can be used to make nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or ballistic missiles. China worries that the North would consider the action provocative.

The U.N. resolution "is a balanced resolution and the spirit must also be reflected in its implementation," Liu said. "The parties, while implementing it, should not try to expand the sanctions mandated by the resolution."

Liu said the sanctions were not an end in themselves.

"They are rather the means to an end, which is to solve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful way through dialogue," he said.