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Use Syria to warn North Korea against WMD, says US official Use Syria to warn North Korea against WMD, says US official
(35 minutes later)
A strong response to the chemical weapons attack in Syria would help deter North Korea from using its "massive chemical weapons arsenal", a senior US defence official said in Beijing, as Washington presses its case for a military strike targeting the Assad regime.
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/>James Miller, the US under-secretary of defence policy, said that in scheduled talks with China's defence ministry on Monday he stress that norms against the use of chemical weapons must be upheld.
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/>"I emphasised the massive chemical weapons arsenal that North Korea has and that we didn't want to live in a world in which North Korea felt the threshold for chemical weapons use had been lowered," Miller said.
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/>"I went through that case and made the argument that it was strongly not just in American national interests but in Chinese and international interests, that there be a strong response to Assad's clear and massive use of chemical weapons." 		The United States is trying to enlist Beijing's support for military action against Syria by arguing that it would help deter North Korea from using chemical weapons and threatening security in China's neighbourhood.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, has urged Washington to proceed with "extreme caution" on Syria and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, told Barack Obama at a G20 summit in Russia on Friday that a military strike could not solve the problem.
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/>Beijing has repeatedly called for an impartial investigation by UN chemical weapons inspectors into the attack in Syria and has warned against prejudging the results. It has said that whoever used chemical weapons must be held accountable.
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/>Miller said he also discussed cybersecurity with Wang and urged China to pressure impoverished and isolated North Korea, which has tested nuclear weapons three times since 2006, towards "credible and authentic" denuclearisation talks. 		The US undersecretary of deface policy, James Miller, who was in Beijing to meet with Chinese officials, said a retaliatory strike against the Syrian government would uphold the international norm that chemical weapons must not be used.
Miller said he emphasised to his Chinese counterpart that lowering the threshold for chemical weapons use could put US troops at risk, threatening China's security and that of the entire globe.
"I emphasised the massive chemical weapons arsenal that North Korea has and that we didn't want to live in a world in which North Korea felt that the threshold for chemical weapons usage had been lowered," Miller said after talks with Wang Guanzhong, the Chinese army's deputy chief of staff.
It was strongly in China's interest that there be a "strong response to Assad's clear and massive use of chemical weapons", Miller said he told Wang.
China has joined with Russia in blocking action against Syria at the UN security council and strongly opposes strikes on Syria by the US or its allies in response to a 21 August chemical attack near Damascus that the US says killed more than 1,400 people. Beijing has called for political talks to end the violence that has killed an estimated 100,000 people and displaced two million more.
While China remains North Korea's most important ally, it has repeatedly expressed concerns about the regime's threat to regional stability and has sought to coax Pyongyang back to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks – so far unsuccessfully. Beijing joined the international community in tightening sanctions against the North over a banned missile launch and nuclear test that again raised the specter of armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula just across the Yellow Sea from China.
The US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, warned recently that North Korea possesses a massive stockpile of chemical weapons that threatens South Korea and the 28,000 US troops stationed there.
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