US steps up pressure on China to rein in North Korea - Washington Post

The United States has stepped up diplomatic pressure on China by accusing its leaders of "enabling" North Korea to start a uranium-enrichment program and to launch attacks on South Korea, a senior U.S. administration official said this weekend.

In response to the North Korean moves and apparent Chinese acquiescence, Washington is moving to redefine its relationship with South Korea and Japan, potentially creating an anti-China bloc in Northeast Asia that officials say they don't want but may need.

In meetings with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing and in Washington since North Korea launched a deadly artillery barrage at a South Korean island on Nov. 23, U.S. officials have charged that China is turning a blind eye to North Korean violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, international agreements and a 1953 armistice halting the Korean War that China helped to negotiate.

The accusations mark a further deterioration of the tone and direction of the U.S. relationship with Asia's emerging giant and come as both countries prepare for a second summit next month between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.

"The Chinese embrace of North Korea in the last eight months has served to convince North Korea that China has its back and has encouraged it to behave with impunity," said a senior administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "We think the Chinese have been enabling North Korea."

The Korean Peninsula, the official added, has catapulted to the "top of the security agenda when President Hu comes here . . . and the Chinese are aware of it."

Obama called Hu on Sunday night to discuss North Korea and urged China to help send a clear message to Pyongyang "that its provocations are unacceptable," the White House said Monday.

"The president emphasized the need for North Korea to halt its provocative behavior and to meet its international obligations," the White House said. "The president condemned the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island on November 23 and its pursuit of a uranium enrichment program in defiance of its obligations." It said Obama "also highlighted the American commitment to the security of our allies in the region."

The White House statement said Obama and Hu agreed on the importance of working together toward the "shared goals" of peace and stability in Northeast Asia and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But it made no mention of Hu's response to Obama's complaints about North Korea."

A Chinese statement on the phone call said Hu "regrets the loss of lives and property" in the North Korean shelling last month. It was the first such comment from Hu about the attack, but it echoed an earlier North Korean expression of regret for killing civilians.

The U.S. exasperation with China over the Koreas has been evident since June, when Obama accused China of "willful blindness" in remaining silent over North Korea's suspected sinking of a South Korean warship in March. But the administration's position now that China is in effect partially to blame for the problems is new.

At a meeting Monday with the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hopes to begin the process of tightening the three-way relationship, as a response to the persistent North Korean provocations and China's inaction. The United States and South Korea announced Friday the successful renegotiation of their free-trade agreement, which will be as important strategically as it is economically to the U.S. presence in the region.

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North Korea Report Validates Concern, Mullen Says - New York Times

He said that American leaders have long assumed that North Korea continued “to head in the direction of additional nuclear weapons,” and a report in The New York Times on Sunday that Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was recently allowed to view a new and sophisticated plant for enriching uranium bolstered that assumption.

“This validates a long-standing concern we’ve had with regard to North Korea and its enrichment of uranium,” he said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour.”

The new plant, whose modernistic technology, rich collection of centrifuges and up-to-date control room astonished Dr. Hecker, did not exist in the spring of 2009, just before international weapons inspectors were thrown out of the country. While North Korea has already tested two atomic bombs and produced other nuclear weapons, those were manufactured from the spent fuel harvested from a nuclear reactor, not from enriched uranium.

North Korea insists the uranium is intended for a reactor that would generate electricity. American officials, however, believe the Communist regime there is focused on building more nuclear weapons and fear that without any capacity to inspect, they cannot know for certain.

North Korea is already being punished for flouting inspections with sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The Obama administration’s new verbal campaign may be intended to pressure China, North Korea’s most important patron.

However, Admiral Mullen did not express confidence that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, would respond to new pressures.

“He blows hot and cold,” Admiral Mullen said, adding later that the North Korean leader was “predictable in his unpredictability.” “He moves in a certain direction and then reverts, and I certainly would see him in his reversion mode at this particular point in time.”

Admiral Mullen also sought to prop up President Obama’s effort to secure ratification of an arms control treaty with Russia — the so-called New Start — by a two-thirds majority of the United States Senate. The prospects of knitting together that majority seemed to collapse last week when Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chief Republican negotiator in the Senate on the arms issue, said he would block a vote on the pact in the current lame-duck session of Congress.

The treaty would force both countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals and resume inspections that lapsed last year for the first time since the Cold War.

Clearly targeting his remarks to Republican misgivings about a new treaty, Admiral Mullen said he was “completely comfortable with where we are militarily” and feared only that without a treaty we cannot verify Russian claims about paring its arsenal. He called ratification of a treaty an urgent “national security issue of great significance.”

“We’re close to one year without any ability to verify what’s going on in Russia,” he said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” reinforced his position, noting that Russia has “thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at the United States,” and that from the Reagan administration on, arms controls treaties “have been overwhelmingly passed.”

Both Admiral Mullen and Mrs. Clinton tried to clarify how long the Obama administration intends to keep American troops in Afghanistan. They said that American units would slowly turn over leadership in combat operations to the Afghan army starting in the spring, but the goal is not to cede that combat role completely until the end of 2014. Afterwards, Americans would continue to advise, equip and train the Afghan army, both said.

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Evidence Found in Creek in Case of Missing North Carolina Girl - Fox News

Investigators combing a creek in rural North Carolina recovered evidence that could provide "valuable information" in the case of missing 10-year-old Zahra Baker.

The Hickory Police Department said in a statement that search teams found the evidence on Wednesday in Caldwell County. 

Zahra, of Hickory, N.C., a bone cancer survivor who used a prosthetic leg and hearing aides, was reported missing on Oct. 9.

The latest evidence, which is being sent to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's lab, was discovered in a creek, police sources told NewsChannel 36. 

The Charlotte Observer reports that a team of 40 investigators -- accompanied by a medical examiner -- searched the water and ground surrounding Gunpowder Creek in Caldwell County on Wednesday.   

Zahra was reported missing by her father, Adam Baker, under what police have described as suspicious circumstances. Authorities believe that the girl is dead.

Zahra's stepmother, Elisa Baker, is jailed on an obstruction of justice charge. Investigators say she admitted writing a bogus ransom note found at the scene of a fire in the family's backyard on the day Zahra was reported missing. A Catawba County grand jury indicted her on the charge last week.

The 42-year-old woman is cooperating with authorities, sources tell FoxNews.com. 

Investigators recovered a bone last week near a home in Caldwell County where the girl once lived with her father and stepmother. They believe that the bone, which is still undergoing testing, is Zahra's. Police also found a prosthetic leg in some brush that it is confirmed to have belonged to the girl.

Adam Baker and his daughter moved from Australia to North Carolina after he wed Elisa Baker, whom he met on a social networking website. 

The Charlotte Observer reported Thursday that Zahra's biological mother, Emily Dietrich, is en route from Australia to North Carolina. Dietrich has had no contact with the girl since she was a baby, according to the newspaper.

"I felt robbed before she was taken. Now I just feel broken," Dietrich reportedly told Australia's Channel 7 News.

Click here to read more on this story from the Charlotte Observer 

FoxNews.com's Cristina Corbin and the Associated Press contributed to this report 

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Kim Jong-un attends North Korean military parade - The Guardian

Kim Jong-un and his father, Kim Jong-il, watch the military parade in Pyongyang. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

Kim Jong-il's heir apparent joined his father at a massive military parade in Pyongyang today, his most public appearance since being named as North Korea's next leader.

Dressed in a dark blue civilian suit, Kim Jong-un sat next to his father on an observation platform at Kim Il-sung Plaza as tanks carrying rocket-propelled grenades and long-range missiles rolled by as part of celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the ruling Workers' party.

The event was broadcast live on state TV, giving North Koreans their first good look at the future leader. Days earlier, the world got a first glimpse of the son from photos published in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper.

There were cheers and some tears from North Koreans attending the parade. "Kim Jong-il! Protect him to the death!" "Kim Jong-il, let's unite to support him!" they chanted as the 68-year-old leader walked the length of the platform, appearing to limp slightly.

Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

The parade was said to be the nation's largest ever, an impressive display of unity and military might for a country known for its elaborately staged performances.

Thousands of troops from every branch of North Korea's 1.2 million-strong military, as well as from naval officers' academies and military nursing schools, goose-stepped around the plaza to the accompaniment of a brass band.

Tanks and trucks loaded with Katyusha rocket launchers and grenades rolled past. They were dwarfed by the series of missiles that paraded by, each larger than the last and emblazoned with: "Defeat the US military. US soldiers are the Korean People's army's enemy."

Ri Yong Ho, chief of the general staff of the North Korean army, said at the event: "If the US imperialists and their followers infringe on our sovereignty and dignity even slightly, we will blow up the stronghold of their aggression with a merciless and righteous retaliatory strike by mobilising all physical means, including self-defensive nuclear deterrent force, and achieve the historic task of unification."

The parade was probably less about showing off its military might than about introducing the heir to the North Korean people and building up his image as the next leader, according to Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea analyst at South Korea's Korea Institute for Defence Analyses.

Kim Yong-hyun, an expert on North Korea at Seoul's Dongguk University, said: "The parade served as a sign that the military has loyalty to the successor."

A select group of media outlets was allowed into the country to cover the festivities, and were given front-row seats at the two events where the Kims appeared: a performance of the Arirang mass games spectacle yesterday, and today's military parade.

The question of who will take over leadership of the nuclear-armed nation has been a pressing one since Kim Jong-il reportedly suffered a stroke in 2008. . Kim Jong-un won his first military post with a promotion to general late last month, and was appointed to the Workers' party's central military commission and the central committee, strong signs he was being groomed to eventually succeed his father.

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