SEOUL: Chinese leader Xi Jinping and new South Korean president Moon Jae-In agreed Thursday that denuclearising North Korea was a “common goal” between them, Moon’s office said. Ties between Seoul and Beijing have soured over the South’s deployment of a controversial US anti-missile system aimed at guarding against threats from the nuclear-armed North. China sees the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system as a threat to its own military capability and has slapped a series of measures against South Korean businesses seen as economic retaliation. In their first phone conversation, the two leaders “agreed that denuclearising the Korean peninsula is the two countries’ common goal,” Moon’s spokesman Yoon Young-Chan told reporters. Xi officially invited Moon to visit Beijing, Yoon added.

Source: Manila Times May 11, 2017 06:11 UTC