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Sydney, Australia, Dec 13 (AFP): South Korea’s president on Monday ruled out joining a US diplomatic boycott of February’s Beijing Winter Olympics, citing the need to work with China.<\/p>\n
Visiting Canberra, Moon Jae-in said he was “not considering” snubbing the Olympics to protest China’s human rights abuses, as several Western nations have done.<\/p>\n
“We have not received a request from any other country including the United States to participate in the diplomatic boycott,” he said.<\/p>\n
China has warned the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada that they will “pay the price”.<\/p>\n
The boycott was prompted by China’s abuses against the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang and its smothering of democracy in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
Moon stressed that South Korea wanted to promote a free and open Pacific region, but also had to consider China’s role in trying to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n
“We need the constructive efforts of China to enable denuclearisation of DPRK (North Korea)” he said, adding that South Korea wanted a harmonious relationship with China.<\/p>\n
Beijing welcomed the comments.<\/p>\n
Seoul’s position on the Olympics “is a demonstration of the friendship between China and South Korea”, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.<\/p>\n
Beijing is “willing to make common efforts with the South Korean side to push for a political resolution” on the Korean Peninsula, he added.<\/p>\n
Moon is currently on a three-day state visit to Australia, where the two countries signed a series of technology and military cooperation agreements.<\/p>\n
They include the sale of 30 howitzers — mobile artillery guns — to Australia as part of a contract worth around $720 million.<\/p>\n
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Sydney, Australia, Dec 13 (AFP): South Korea’s president on Monday ruled out joining a US diplomatic boycott of February’s Beijing Winter Olympics, citing the need to work with China. Visiting Canberra, Moon Jae-in said he was “not considering” snubbing the Olympics to protest China’s human rights abuses, as several Western nations have done. “We have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-179236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}