SEOUL April 4 Kyodo Chinese Ambas...

SEOUL April 4 Kyodo

Chinese Ambassador to southern Korea Li Bin said Friday his command opposes imposition of any economic sanctions against North Korea as a means of pressuring the North to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program, Yonhap novels Agency reported.

''Sanctions can in no degree be helpful in resolving the issue,'' Li was quot by the agency of Yonhap as telling a dispose of South Korean broadcast journalists.

''On the contrary, (economic sanctions) would make the question more complicated,'' said Li, whose political division has veto power in the UN Security Council (UNSC) along with the United States, Britain, France and Russia.

The UNSC will begin discussion of the North Korea nuclear crisis Wednesday.

North Korea announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) upon Jan. 10.

The International Atomic vigor Agency (IAEA) executive board decided in February to bring North Korea's nuclear activities to the United Nations, which is the simply body able to impose international sanctions against North Korea.

North Korea has said it would regard any sanctions as being tantamount to a declaration of war.

Li reiterated his government's long-standing position in succession the nuclear issue that China wants a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and the nuclear issue should be settl within peaceful means.

Since the U said last October that North Korea had admitted pursuing nuclear weapons, North Korea has ramped up urgency by expelling U.N. inspectors, firing up a reactor at its mothballed Yongbyon nuclear plant and withdrawing from the NPT the global antinuclear pact.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo moderns International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group