China seeks deal to halt North Korea nuke, missile development

The United States and South Korea should suspend their expansive joint military exercise in return for North Korea suspending its nuclear and missile development, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.
Wang floated the idea in the midst of tensions that are once again rising on the Korean Peninsula. Speaking at a press conference at the National People's Congress meeting in Beijing, he said a "double suspension" could defuse a looming crisis, the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
Wang said his plan would denuclearize the peninsula and establish a foundation for negotiations. He compared the political clashes pitting South Korea and the United States against North Korea to trains accelerating toward each other on the same track.
"Are the two sides really ready for a head-on collision?" Wang said. "The priority is to flash the red light and apply the brakes."
Similar proposals in the past have been rejected by the U.S. and South Korea, which argued the missile tests defy international law and should not be negotiated.
Wang said China is committed to a stable and peaceful Korean Peninsula, and that his country could be the "railway switchman" to get talks going. Chinese officials will get the opportunity to make their case to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson next week, when Tillerson makes his first official visits to China, South Korea, Japan.
It has been an eventful week. On Monday, North Korea test-launched four ballistic missiles into the ocean near Japan, apparently in response to an annual military exercise now underway involving thousands of U.S. servicemembers and hundreds of thousands of South Korean troops.
North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un supervised the launches and that the aim of the exercise was to prove its artillery units were capable of striking "U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan."
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President Trump discussed the launches with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn late Monday.
"Japan and the U.S. confirmed that the latest North Korean missile launches were clearly against U.N. resolutions and a clear provocation against the regional and international community," Abe later told reporters. "(North Korea's) threat has entered a new phase."
On Tuesday, the U.S. Pacific Command announced that missile launchers and other military hardware needed to set up an anti-missile defense system were being moved into South Korea. The deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system was intended to intercept and destroy short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, military officials said.
That raised the ire of China, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang warning the U.S. and South Korea that there would be "consequences."