[Straits Times] CHINA, long viewed as North Korea's protector, increasingly doubts its own influence and would support the peninsula's reunification if the regime collapses, leaked US documents said Monday.
Over an expansive dinner last year, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan revealed that Beijing considers North Korea's nuclear program to be 'very troublesome,' according to a memo obtained by whistle-blower site WikiLeaks.
Ambassador Cheng Guoping 'said China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term,' said the leaked cable by US Ambassador Richard Hoagland and reprinted by Britain's The Guardian newspaper.
In another cable reproduced by The New York Times, a Chinese official whose name was removed said that Beijing believed North Korea had 'gone too far' after carrying out its second nuclear test and firing a missile.
The official told a US diplomat 'that Chinese officials had expressed Chinese displeasure to North Korean counterparts and had pressed (North Korea) to return to the negotiation table,' it said.
'Unfortunately,' the Chinese official was quoted as saying, 'those protests had had no effect'. 'The only country that can make progress with the North Koreans is the United States,' the Chinese official was quoted as saying. |