By MARK LANDLER and MARTIN FACKLER
c.2011 New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama warned President Hu Jintao that if China did not step up its pressure on North Korea, the United States would have to redeploy its forces in Asia to protect itself from a potential North Korean strike on U.S. soil, a senior administration official said Thursday.
Obama’s warning, first made in a phone call to Hu last month and repeated over a private dinner at the White House on Tuesday, persuaded China to take a harder line toward North Korea, the official said, which opened the door to a resumption of dialogue between North and South Korea.
On Thursday, the South Korean government said that it had agreed to hold defense talks with the North, the first engagement between the Koreas since a deadly North Korean artillery attack on a South Korean island in November seemed to push the peninsula to the brink of war.