Obama warns Hu to pressure North Korea
President Barack Obama warned Chinese President Hu Jintao that Washington would have to redeploy forces in Asia unless Beijing stepped up pressure on North Korea, The New York Times reported on Friday.
The US “warning, first made in a phone call to Mr Hu last month and repeated over a private dinner at the White House on Tuesday, persuaded China to take a harder line toward North Korea,” the report said citing an unnamed US official.
It said the push seeking action from the visiting Chinese leader “opened the door to a resumption of dialogue between North and South Korea.”
On Thursday, Seoul said that it had agreed to hold defence talks with the North, the first engagement between the Koreas since a deadly North Korean artillery attack on a South Korean island in November. The strike lurched the peninsula seemingly to the brink of war.