Biden to press Xi on NKorea in G20 talks
PHNOM PENH: United States President Joe Biden landed in Asia on Saturday, vowing to urge Chinese leader xi Jinping to rein in NORTH KOREA WHEN THEY HOLD THEIR fiRST FACE-TO-FACE MEETING AT NEXT WEEK’S GROUP OF 20 (G20) SUMMIT in southern Indonesia.
capital Biden Phnom touched down Penh in for Cambodia’s meetings with leaders from the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) ahead of his encounter with his Chinese counterpart in the resort island of Bali on Monday.
The meeting between the two superpowers comes after a recordbreaking North Korea spate sent of fears missile soaring tests that by the reclusive state would soon conduct its seventh nuclear test.
In Monday’s meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Biden will tell xi that China — Pyongyang’s biggest ally — has “an interest in playing a constructive role in restraining
North Korea’s worst tendencies,” US
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
Biden will also tell xi that if North
Korea’s missile and nuclear buildup
“keeps going down this road, it will simply mean further enhanced
American military and security presence in the region.”
Biden would not make demands on China, but rather give xi “his perspective” that “North Korea represents a threat not just to the United States, not just to [South Korea] and Japan, but to peace and stability across the entire region,” Sullivan said.
Whether China wants to increase pressure on North Korea is “of course, up to them,” the adviser said. But with North Korea rapidly ramping up its missile capacities, “the operational situation is more acute in the current moment.”
Biden and xi, the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies, have spoken by phone multiple times since Biden became president in January 2021.
But the coronavirus pandemic and xi’s subsequent aversion to foreign travel have prevented them from meeting in person.
The pair are not short of topics to discuss, with Washington and Beijing at loggerheads over issues ranging from trade to human rights in China’s xinjiang region and the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged the two sides to work together, warning on Friday of “a growing risk that the global economy will be divided into two parts, led by the two biggest economies: the United States and China.”
Before the G20, Biden will push the US’ commitment to Southeast Asia in meetings with leaders from the region, seeking to counter Beijing’s influence there.
China has been flexing its muscles — through trade, diplomacy and military clout — in recent years in a region it sees as its strategic backyard.
Biden flew into Phnom Penh with an agenda emphasizing his administration’s policy of “elevating” the US presence in the region as a guarantor of stability, Sullivan said.
Biden will argue for “the need for freedom of navigation for lawful, unimpeded commerce, and for ensuring that the United States is playing a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the region.”
“He wants to use the next 36 hours to build on that foundation to take American engagement forward,” Sullivan said, noting that this would include raising US-Asean ties at the summit to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”