Russia against fueling tensions on Korean nuclear issue

The fueling of tensions around the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear program obstructs the achievement of agreements on resolving this problem, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a TV interview on Saturday.

"I would be against fueling tensions, because, in the process of settling the nuclear problem of the Korean Peninsula in the past year and a half, we have seen situations in which one side or another has obstructed the implementation of agreements that were reached in September last year," Lavrov said on Vesti-24 television channel.

In particular, the participants in the six-party talks on DPRK nuclear program have achieved "quite a substantial agreement, and it stipulates all necessary steps that need to be taken to comprehensively settle this problem, but the sanctions the U.S. imposed on DPRK's accounts in the Delta Asia bank in Macao a year and a half ago have obstructed this process," Lavrov said.

"If any side takes more such abrupt steps, we could find ourselves in a deadlock again," he said.

A new round of the six-nation negotiations between Russia, China, the DPRK, South Korea, the United States and Japan on the Korean peninsula nuclear problem will be held on Dec. 18 in Beijing.

Source: Xinhua