TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13,2005
INTERNATIONAL
GOVERNMENT
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN 7A
You Sung Ho/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Christopher Hill, left, the top U.S. nuclear negotiator, meets South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, right, in Seoul on yesterday. The top U.S. nuclear negotiator with North Korea arrived in Seoul yesterday before going to Beijing for full six-nation talks.
Nuke talks resume
Representatives aim to end negotiation standoff
BY BO-MI LIM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL, South Korea — Representatives to talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program will try again today to resolve the standoff at six-nation negotiations, but the main U.S. envoy insisted the key lies with Pyongyang.
The latest round of discussions broke for a recess early last month after a record 13 days of negotiations where participants failed to agree on a statement of principles laying a groundwork for dismantling the North's nuclear weapons programs.
The talks were to resume the last week of August, but the North demanded a two-week postponement — taking issue with annual joint military exercises between the U.S. and South
Korea, and Washington's appointment of a special envoy on human rights in North Korea.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met Monday evening in Seoul with South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, who is headed to Pyongyang this week for Cabinet-level talks between the two Koreas separate from the nuclear forum.
The U.S. diplomat said he would be able to gauge where this week's arms talks were headed after meeting with the North Koreans.
"It's hard to be optimistic or pessimistic at this point. It hasn't started." Hill said.
communist state's past record proves it can't be trusted with any nuclear program.
On Friday, Hill reiterated a set of measures — including energy aid offered by South Korea — that he said would make it unnecessary for North Korea "to go and develop additional capacity, especially through such very difficult and extremely expensive projects as nuclear energy."
One key dispute has emerged over Pyongyang's demands for a civilian nuclear program — something Washington has strongly resisted, saying the
Hill emphasized Monday that the main issue remained getting a broad agreement on a joint statement of eliminating nuclear weapons from the peninsula.
"I really do hope we can move rapidly and move toward an agreement on these goals and principles," he said.
Disabled man, son hijack plane demand meeting with Church
Fernando Vergara/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY ANDREW SELSKY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Porfirio Ramirez, a hijacker in a wheelchair, is escorted from a Colombian airliner with 25 people aboard on the tarmac of Bogota's El Dorado airport, yesterday. The Arias airlines flight had departed the southern city of Florencia for a flight to Bogota yesterday when two people armed with grenades commanded it, said Gen. Edgar Lesmez, the chief of the Colombian Air Force.
BOGOTA, Colombia — A father in a wheelchair and his son hijacked an airliner yesterday, claiming to be armed with grenades, but they freed all the passengers more than four hours after landing in Bogota, authorities said.
The crew was reported still on the plane.
The Aires plane, believed to be carrying 20 passengers and five crew members, had left the southern city of Florencia when it was commandeered, air force Gen. Edgar Lesmez said.
The plane landed in Bogota, its original destination, but at a military airfield next to the civilian El Dorado Airport.
The hijackers demanded a meeting with representatives of the Catholic Church, the attorney general's office and a human rights organization, officials said, and government negotiators and a priest spoke with them while the twin-propeller plane stood on the tarmac.
It was not known if the men made any other demands.
Live television broadcasts later showed people filing off the plane.
A negotiator confirmed to The Associated Press by phone from inside the plane that the passengers had been let go, but that the crew remained on board.
Martin Gonzalez, spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, identified the hijackers as Luis Ramirez, about 42, and his son Linsen Ramirez, about 22.
They did not appear to be
The hijackers earlier allowed five women and two babies to leave the plane, Bogota's police chief, Gen. Luis Alberto Gomez, said.
long to any of Colombia's illegal armed groups, said Gen. Alberto Ruiz, chief of operations for the National Police.
"They seem to be common citizens," he told reporters.
The drama riveted Colombians, who tuned to radios and TV sets.
They listened to one hostage, while still on the plane, describe the scene in a furtive cell phone conversation with local RCN radio.
"They have indicated to us they have explosives," Reinaldo Duque, the hostage, said in a hushed voice.
Duque, who works in Colombia's Congress, said all the passengers were herded to the rear of the Dash-8 plane while a priest spoke with the hijackers in the front. Duque said the older hijacker boarded the plane in a wheelchair.
The wheelchair was too large to pass through a metal detector at the Florencia airport, and the man was not patted down by security agents, Luis Octavio
Rojas, the airport director, told the Associated Press.
"But they did give him and the chair a visual inspection," Rojas said.
Among those on the plane was congressman Antonio Serrano, his assistant, Consuelo Barragan, told RCN television.
It was the second time an Aires flight has been hijacked on the same route.
In February 2002, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia hijacked an Aires plane flying from Florencia to Bogota, forced it to land on a rural highway and kidnapped a Colombian senator who was aboard. Other passengers and the crew were left alone.
That hijacking led the government to cancel peace talks with the rebel group, which has been waging war in this Andean nation for four decades.
The senator, Jorge Gechen Turbay, president of the Senate's peace commission, remains a hostage.
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