China showed growing signs of impatience with North Korea, urging a swift restart of nuclear talks following President Hu Jintao taking the unusual step of sending a personal letter to Kim Jong-Il.
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China, North Korea's closest ally, has been trying to initiate a second round of discussions following a first round of trilateral talks among the United States, North Korea and China in April.
North Korea insists it speak directly to the United States and has turned up the pressure in recent days with reports that it has completed reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons.
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Beijing has the biggest leverage over the North because of traditional friendly ties and because of the large quantities of fuel and food that it ships to the Stalinist country.
Its growing willingness to use this leverage was illustrated earlier this year, when it reportedly halted oil supplies for a few days.
And China has reason to be alarmed by the prospect of a nuclear North Korea.
Not only would it likely trigger an arms race -- in which Japan, South Korea and possibly even Taiwan would build their own bombs -- but a nuclear North Korea would scare away foreign investors, hurting the region's economy.
But even though China is prepared to increase its pressure on North Korea, it does not want the regime to collapse.
That scenario would entail massive refugee flows out of North Korea, followed eventually by a unified and possibly US-dominated Korea stretching all the way to the Chinese border.
Agence France Presse 15/07/2003
