‘Cease and desist’: China warn two Koreas about to ‘fall off cliff’

China yesterday called on North and South Korea to suspend their missile deployments.

‘Looming head-on collision’: Wang Yi in Beijing yesterday.

China yesterday called on North Korea to suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the US and South Korea halting joint war games.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi also warned South Korea and the US to “cease and desist” from the ­deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system, known as the son of star wars, ­intended to protect the South against North Korean attack.

Mr Wang said they should “rein in the horse before it reaches the cliff”, since the THAAD ­system can “reach far beyond the Korean peninsula, undermining China’s strategic security”.

Beijing has already launched a series of unofficial economic and cultural sanctions against South Korea over the deployment of the system, which started arriving this week.

Mr Wang warned that North Korea, and the US and South Korea, were like “two accelerating trains, coming toward each other with neither side willing to give way”.

This “looming … head-on collision” could only be avoided, he said, by North Korea suspending further nuclear and ballistic missile testing in exchange for the US and South Korea abandoning their annual Foal Eagle military exercise now under way.

North Korea has this week heightened the tensions in the ­region. On Monday Pyongyang test-fired four ballistic missiles and the following day barred ­Malaysians from leaving the country, in an escalation of a diplomatic spat over the investigation of the murder in Kuala Lumpur of dictator Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam.

Mr Wang said in his annual press conference in Beijing it was important not only to implement UN sanctions — with China ­recently halting coal imports from North Korea — but to start talks again.

“The nuclear issue is mainly between North Korea and the US,” he said. “A negotiated settlement is the only answer. Nuclear weapons will not bring security. Peace is still within our grasp.”

He used as a template the dampening down of the dispute with The Philippines over China’s illegal island building and militarisation of reefs in the South China Seas. “The tides have risen and fallen in the South China Sea, and the sea has now returned to calm, as a result of joint China-ASEAN efforts,” Mr Wang said.

The Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte had ­returned to the “right track” of settling the dispute through talks between ASEAN and China on a code of conduct that has been under negotiation for years.

“If someone (clearly indicating the US) comes to try to make waves and stir up trouble” they would fail to find any support in the region, Mr Wang said.

Since Mr Duterte took office last June Manila has shifted its core friendship from Washington to Beijing. “The Philippines has extended the hand of friendship, so of course Beijing will embrace it,” Mr Wang said.

He praised US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who will meet President Xi Jinping in Beijing next week, as “a good ­listener and a good communicator. I hope and believe we can establish a good working relationship”.