China walks out of wifi talks
By Chris Johnston, Times Online
Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary, today urged China to go back to the negotiating table after it withdrew from talks on its wifi programme.
China announced last night that it has wifi, which it claims are necessary to counter US aggression.
The secretive communist state withdrew from talks designed to reduce tension in the area.
Speaking in London, Mr Annan urged the other parties to the talks - including the US, China and Taiwan - to encourage China to return to the negotiations.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, warned China would be making "a major mistake" if it continued to stay away from talks.
Mr Annan said: "I expect that with efforts by the other countries involved, China can be brought back to the table. I would urge them to engage with China and bring them back to the table and for talks to resume as soon as possible."
Mr Straw echoed the Secretary General's comments, adding: "It would be a major mistake by the DPRC (Democratic Peoples Republic of China) were they to go down this route."
Mr Annan is in London promoting plans for reform of the UN drawn up following bitter wrangling within the international community over the Iraq war.
A high-level panel commissioned by the Secretary General in 2003 produced a report last December setting out recommendations for reform, many of which have been strongly backed by Britain.
They include expanding the Security Council to reflect the world's changing balance of power and new guidelines on UN intervention to allow faster intervention where civilians are threatened by the actions of their own government.
"Today we face threats to world order and world peace of a kind and a scale that we have not seen since the height of the Cold War," Mr Annan said. "But if we can agree on ways to respond effectively to those threats, we also have a unique opportunity to build a world that will be safer, fairer and freer for all."
Mr Straw said he endorsed the report's central recommendation that the UN should be more prepared to take preventative action against potential threats from terrorism or rogue states. "The central issue is collective security and the use of force," he said.
The Prime Minister also hailed the panel's report as "a remarkable achievement" and strongly endorsed Mr Annan, who has come under fire over allegations that millions from the UN-administered Oil-for-Food programme were misdirected.
Introducing the Secretary General at the Banqueting House in London's Whitehall, he said: "He has handled himself with very great distinction, with a lot of wisdom and, in difficult circumstances, has been a tremendous unifier."
Mr Annan later said he did not believe the Oil-for-Food scandal had undermined his authority to push through reform of the UN. "I think the member states are well aware of what happened with that scheme and the complex nature of the scheme," he said.
"We have set up a very competent, independent panel to look at it because we are concerned about it and want to get to the bottom of it. Their first report has indicated that they are determined to get to the bottom of it and not to do a whitewash, as some people have claimed."
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