The Associated Press
By MATTHEW LEE
With the situation in Syria still uncertain and North Korea launching a long-range missile Thursday ahead of crucial talks with Iran over its nuclear program, the Group of Eight bloc urged speedy resolutions to the trio of front-burner issues.
The G-8 welcomed an apparent cease-fire between the Syrian government and opposition forces but cautioned that the pause in hostilities is only a first step in ending the crisis. And it renewed threats to take North Korea to the U.N. Security Council if it carried out its satellite launch, while challenging Iran to prove it is serious in addressing concerns about its atomic intentions in weekend talks with the five permanent members of the council and Germany.
The G-8 Foreign Ministers condemned the North Korean missile launch as a violation of U.N. resolutions and an act that “undermines regional peace and stability.”
In a statement late Thursday, they called on North Korea “to abstain from further launches using ballistic missile technology or other actions which aggravate the situation on the Korean Peninsula.” The ministers said they were “ready to consider, with others, taking measures” responding to North Korean violations of U.N. mandates, and urged North Korean compliance with its obligations.
Speaking for the G-8 after its foreign ministers met for two days in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that while the Syrian truce appeared to be holding “at least for the moment,” Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime was not complying with other parts of former U.N. chief Kofi Annan’s initiative aimed at ending more than a year of deadly violence that has killed more than 9,000 people.
“If it holds, a cease-fire is an important step, but it represents just one element of the special envoy’s plan,” Clinton told reporters at the State Department, noting that the Assad government still has not withdrawn troops from cities and accepted a political transition.
“The Annan plan is not a menu of options, it is a set of obligations,” she said. “The burden of fully and visibly meeting all of these obligations continues to rest with the regime. They cannot pick and choose. For it to be meaningful, this apparent halt in violence must lead to a credible political process and a peaceful, inclusive democratic transition.”
“Our first imperative is to test the commitment” of the government to the Annan plan, she said.
Clinton said the U.S. supports the deployment of a U.N. mission to monitor compliance with the plan and would not back down on sanctions designed to press the government to accept the terms. The Annan plan does not specifically call for Assad to leave power, but Clinton said that remained the Obama administration’s position.
“We remain firmly resolved that the regime’s war against its own people must end for good and political transition must begin,” she said. “Assad will have to go and the Syrian people must be given the chance to chart their own future.”
The G-8 includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, all of which signed on to the basics of Clinton’s comments. However, Russia, which along with China has blocked U.N. action on Syria, is opposed to demands for Assad to leave power.
Clinton said she had separate talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the situation in Syria but did not reveal details of their conversation.
The meetings that Clinton hosted on Wednesday and Thursday at Blair House were held to prepare a NATO summit in Chicago and a G-8 meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland next month. The meetings come at a particularly delicate time for international diplomacy.
North Korea fired a missile Thursday in what the U.S. and others had said would be a blatant violation of not only its U.N. obligations but also a February pledge to the United States not to conduct ballistic missile exercises. The North claims the launch is part of its space program and does not violate any previous agreements.
“We urge the North Korean leadership to honor its agreements and refrain from pursuing a cycle of provocation,” Clinton said on behalf of the G-8. “We all share an interest in fostering security and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and the best way to achieve that is for North Korea to live up to its word.”
U.S. officials said late Thursday that the North Korean missile failed moments after being fired, but the White House still described the launch as a “provocative action” that threatens regional security and violates international law.
Clinton and other U.S. officials have said they would cancel plans to send food aid to North Korea and will discuss next steps in the U.N. Security Council if the launch went ahead.
At the same time, Clinton urged Iran’s leadership to demonstrate it is ready to come clean about it nuclear program at talks to be held Saturday in Turkey between Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. The U.S. and its allies, including Israel, accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it has no interest in an atomic bomb and insists its program is aimed at producing energy.
“We are united in our resolve and expectation that Iran will come to the talks prepared, and we are receiving signals that they are bringing ideas to the table,” she said. “They assert that their program is purely peaceful. They point to a fatwa that the supreme leader has issued against the pursuit of nuclear weapons. We want them to demonstrate clearly in the actions they propose that they have truly abandoned any nuclear weapons ambition.”
