SEOUL (Reuters) – Within Seoul for meetings with South Korean leaders, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres upon Friday said he fully supports attempts to completely denuclearize North Korea.
“I would like to take this opportunity to exhibit our full support for the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, especially North Korea, and to say that this particular goal is very essentially important for us to obtain regional security, peace and stability, inch he said whenever meeting with President Yoon Suk-yeol.
Yoon, a conventional who took office in May, has said he could be open to diplomacy but has also vowed solid military measures in order to deter Pyongyang from using its weapons.
North Korea has test terminated a record number of missiles this year, and officials in Seoul and Washington say that it looks preparing to test a nuclear weapon initially since 2017, among stalled denuclearization speaks.
Pyongyang also states it is open to diplomacy, but accuses the United States and South Korea of maintaining hostile policies such as sanctions and military drills.
Meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Recreation area Jin, Guterres pledged support for diplomatic efforts to persuade North Korea in order to surrender its nuclear weapons.
“Everything that can be done in order to launch a process of dialogue, aiming at the denuclearization, it will be a lot welcome and will have the full support from the United Nations, ” he or she said.
(Reporting simply by Josh Smith, Daewoung Kim, and Minwoo Park. Editing simply by Ros Russell)