SOUTH KOREA'S chief nuclear envoy will visit China later this week for talks with his counterpart on North Korea and its nuclear programmes, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
Wi Sung-lac plans to meet with Chinese nuclear envoy Wu Dawei on Thursday to discuss the nuclear standoff and other North Korea issues as well as strategies to deal with them, the ministry said in a statement without elaborating.
But Pyongyang's newly acknowledged uranium enrichment programme is expected to be a key topic.
North Korea revealed in November that it was running a uranium enrichment facility, adding to international concerns about the communist nation's nuclear capabilities. Uranium, if highly enriched, can be used to make weapons, providing Pyongyang with a second way of building atomic bombs after its existing plutonium-based programme.
South Korea and the US have called for a tougher international response to the uranium programme, saying it violates UN Security Council resolutions banning the communist regime from nuclear activity as well as the North's own 2005 commitment to forgo atomic ambitions.
In particular, South Korea is trying to muster international support for its push to take the uranium issue to the UN Security Council. Backing from China is crucial for the South Korean move because it is a veto-holding permanent member of the Council. -- THE KOREAN HERALD/ANN
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