China and Russia’s absence looms over Canada meeting on how to pressure North Korea

Foreign Ministers from around 20 nations will meet on Tuesday to discuss how to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions through diplomatic and financial pressure, but China and Russia will be absent. The Vancouver meeting, co-hosted by Canada and the United States, primarily groups those Nations that sent troops to the Korean war of 1950-53, when China fought alongside the North. China and Russia both criticised ministerial meeting. Moscow, in one side, considers meeting to be destructive and refutes false reports about its support for the event; chineeforeign ministry spokesman Lu Kang, in the other side, said “Holding this kind of meeting that doesn’t include important parties to the Korean peninsula nuclear issue actually cannot help in advancing an appropriate resolution to the issue”. However China and Russia will be fully briefed on the conclusions, the State Department’s director of american policy planning, Brian Hook, said.