Breaking | North Korea’s invitation to China’s Belt and Road summit ‘may cast shadow over UN sanctions’
A Pyongyang delegation will attend the forum in Beijing, which will also see national leaders like Russia’s Putin and Indonesia’s Widodo
China announced on Tuesday that a North Korean delegation had been invited to attend the upcoming belt and road summit, despite a spat between the communist neighbours.
Observers were surprised at the announcement by foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang. They said the move might hinder an international effort to pressure Pyongyang to rein in its nuclear programme.
The South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that Kim Yong-jae, the North Korean minister of external economic relations, would lead its delegation.
Beijing has pulled out all the stops for the summit, scheduled for Sunday and Monday, in a bid to promote President Xi Jinping’s trade and infrastructure initiative to connect China with Eurasia and beyond.
The forum will be attended by national leaders including Indonesia’a Joko Widodo. But Beijing has not invited South Korean leaders amid a stand-off over the deployment of a US missile defence system in Seoul.
Sun Xingjie, a Korean affairs specialist at Jilin University, said he was surprised by the announcement. “It cannot be a good thing because it won’t [help strengthen] international sanctions,” he said.
He added that Pyongyang spurned Beijing when it tried earlier to enlist the North in its “Belt and Road Initiative” in exchange for a commitment to scrap its nuclear weapons programme.