Moon to nudge Biden for North Korea diplomacy
Washington, 21: South Korean President Moon Jae-in hopesWhite House meeting with President Joe Biden will lead to renewed diplomatic urgency by the US on curbing North Korea’s nuclear programme.
The White House, however, is signaling that it is taking a longer view on one of the most difficult foreign policy challenges Biden faces.
Ahead of Friday’s meeting — just the second inperson foreign leader session for Biden because of the coronavirus pandemic — White House officials said North Korea will be a central focus of talks. Coordination on vaccine distribution, climate change and regional security concerns spurred by China are also high on the president's list.
The White House announced last month that it had completed a review of North Korea policy and that Biden would veer from the strategies of his two most recent predecessors, rejecting both Donald Trump’s deeply personal effort to win over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Barack Obama’s more hands-off approach. But the administration has yet to detail what its third-way effort to try to prod the North to abandon its nuclear program will look like. Moon, who will leave office next May, is eager to resume stalled talks between Washington and Pyongyang and between Seoul and Pyongyang. But the Biden administration — which confirmed in March that it had made outreach efforts to the North without success — has been less enthusiastic about the idea of direct negotiations in the near term.
Asked at Thursday’s White House briefing whether Biden was open to holding direct talks with Kim, as Trump did twice, press secretary Jen Psaki demurred. “I don’t expect that to be top on his agenda,” she said of Biden. Still, Moon has made clear he plans to nudge Biden to renew diplomatic efforts with the North. “I will not be pressed by time or become impatient during the remainder of my term. However, if there is an opportunity to restart the clock of peace and advance the peace process on the Korean Peninsula, I will do everything I can,” Moon said.