U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets China's top leaders on Saturday, April 13 in an effort to persuade them to exert pressure on North Korea to scale back its belligerent rhetoric and, eventually, return to nuclear talks, according to Reuters.
Travelling to Beijing for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry made no secret of his desire to see China take a more activist stance toward North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States.
As the North's main trading partner, financial backer and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, China has a unique ability to use its leverage against the impoverished, isolated state, Kerry said in the South Korean capital Seoul late on Friday.
"There is no group of leaders on the face of the planet who have more capacity to make a difference in this than the Chinese, and everybody knows it, including, I believe, them," Kerry told U.S. executives.
"They want to see us try to reach an amicable resolution to this," he said. "But you have to begin with a reality, and the reality is that if your policy is denuclearization – and it is theirs as it is ours as it is everybody's except the North's at this moment – if that's your policy, you've got to put some teeth into it," he said.
Kerry is scheduled to see the top echelon of China's leadership on Saturday, including President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat who outranks Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
