China Blasts US For 'Cold War Mentality' Over 'Useless' North Korea Nuclear Summit

China criticized an international meeting on the North Korean nuclear crisis as illegitimate, because major players such as Beijing and Russia won’t have a seat at the table.

During the meeting, jointly hosted by the U.S. and Canada, in Vancouver on Tuesday, 20 foreign ministers will discuss how to stop the North Korean nuclear crisis, but neither China nor Russia will be there.

"The most important relevant parties of the Korean peninsula issue haven't taken part in the meeting so I don't think the meeting is legal or representative," Lu Kang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said at a regular briefing on Tuesday.

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Lu then went on to condemn the “cold war mentality” of the organizing parties, but he didn’t name any countries specifically.

GettyImages-871865922 Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump attend a welcoming ceremony November 9, 2017 in Beijing, China. Trump is on a 10-day trip to Asia. On Tuesday, China blasted the U.S. for holding an international North Korean nuclear crisis meeting in Vancouver without inviting Beijing. Getty

China continued to blast the Korean Peninsula meeting by calling it “meaningless and useless” in a report by Global Times, China’s Communist Party newspaper.

“The meeting is ridiculous as it aims not at all at solving the nuclear crisis on the Korea Peninsula, but is instead being used as a card to hedge China and Russia out,” Lu Chao, a research fellow at Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences told the paper.

Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, also voiced Russia’s distaste of being left out of the discussion.

“We can only consider this idea as a revival of the Cold War approach and mentality, which is particularly inappropriate in light of the newly emerging trends towards a dialogue between the North and the South,” she said.

Last week, Steve Goldstein, a senior State Department official, confirmed that China and Russia were not invited to the summit but claimed that the U.S. intends to brief them on the developments immediately after.

China is considered one of North Korea’s main allies, however it believes that sanction discussions should remain within the United Nations. China and Russia both have the right to veto any resolution at the Security Council.

The 20 countries attending the summit are reportedly those who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War, including Australia, New Zealand, Britain, France, India, Japan and South Korea who will all have a seat at the table.

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