Foreign ministers of China, Russia consult on N.Korea

The foreign ministers of Russia and China held telephone consultations Saturday over ways to ease the surging tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Russian foreign ministry said.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi “underscored the need to prevent a further escalation in the situation and to work toward conditions that can ease the tensions in the two Koreas’ relations and resume the six-party talks,” the ministry said in a statement.

Both countries are involved in the six-nation negotiations on the North Korean crisis, although Moscow’s close contacts with Pyongyang have waned considerably since the Soviet era.