Monitoring Desk
MOSCOW: Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Vienna-based international organizations Mikhail Ulyanov has called for more serious diplomatic efforts to prevent escalation on the Korean Peninsula.
“Alarming developments around the issue of denuclearization. In order to prevent further deterioration, incl. “Christmas gift” exchanges, there is urgent need to intensify diplomatic efforts. Policy of sanctions must become more creative as envisaged in UNSC resolutions on DPRK,” he wrote on his Twitter account on Wednesday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said earlier on Wednesday his country would unveil a new strategic weapon soon.
According to Kim, North Korea would not stop its strategic nuclear weapons projects as long as the US takes a hostile stance toward Pyongyang.
Apart from that, he said North Korea is no longer obliged to implement its moratorium on nuclear tests due to continuous US missile tests on the Korean Peninsula
The end of December was the deadline Pyongyang set for Washington for drafting a mutually acceptable compromise at the denuclearization talks.
On December 3, North Korea’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song said the ball was in the US court. “It is entirely up to the US what Christmas gift it will select to get”, Ri said.
During his visit to South Korea on June 30, US President Donald Trump visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the border with North Korea where he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the border village of Panmunjeom.
The two leaders agreed to resume working-level consultations on denuclearization, which were suspended after their futile summit in Hanoi in February 2019.
Under this agreement, US and North Korean delegations met in Stockholm on October 5 to discuss ways to normalize bilateral relations.
However they failed to establish dialogue. Whereas Kim Myong-Gil, who led the North Korean delegation, said the talks had been a failure, the US Department of States described these consultations as constructive.
Russian Nuclear Plants Break 2018 Energy Generation Record: Russian nuclear power plants set a new record in 2019, generating almost 209 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, up 4.5 billion kWh from the year before, the national power stations operator said Wednesday.
“In 2019, electricity generation by Russian nuclear power stations … reached a record high of over 208.784 billion kWh … exceeding 204.275 billion produced in 2018”, Rosenergoatom said.
Nuclear power makes up 19 percent of Russia’s energy output, powering every fifth light bulb in the country, the state-run energy authority said.
The European part of Russia gets 40 percent of the energy from nuclear plants.
The country has also recently launched the world’s first industrial floating thermal nuclear power plant, Akademik Lomonosov, which is set to produce electricity for remote areas, including the Arctic region of Chukotka. (TASS)
