US seeks diplomacy with N Korea despite Trump
WASHINGTON: The United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, a senior state department official said on Tuesday, despite US President Donald Trump’s assertion that such talks are a waste of time.
Using the so-called “New York channel,” Joseph Yun, US negotiator with North Korea, has been in contact with diplomats at Pyongyang’s UN mission, the official said, at a time when an exchange of bellicose insults between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fuelled fears of military conflict.
While US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on October 17 said he would continue “diplomatic efforts ... until the first bomb drops,” the official’s comments were the clearest sign the United States was directly discussing issues beyond the release of American prisoners.
There is no sign, however, that the behind-the-scenes communications have improved a relationship vexed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, the death of US university student Otto Warmbier days after his release by Pyongyang in June and the detention of three other Americans.
Word of quiet engagement with Pyongyang comes despite Trump’s comments, North Korea’s weapons advances and suggestions by some US and South Korean officials that Yun’s interactions with North Koreans had been reined in.
“It has not been limited at all, both (in) frequency and substance,” said the state department official.
Among the points that Yun has made to his North Korean interlocutors is to “stop testing” nuclear bombs and missiles, the official said.
North Korea this year conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation and has test-fired a volley of missiles, including ICBMs that, if perfected, could in theory reach the United States mainland.
The possibility that Pyongyang may be closer to attaching a nuclear warhead to an ICBM has alarmed the Trump administration, which in April unveiled a policy of “maximum pressure and engagement” that has so far failed to deter North Korea.
‘TRUMP MENTALLY DERANGED’: N KOREA
North Korea slammed Trump as “incurably mentally deranged” in a personal diatribe ahead of his first visit to Asia as head of state, amid high tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-Un have traded threats of war and personal insults against each other in recent months, heightening worries about a potential conflict on the divided Korean peninsula.
Trump dubbed Kim “Rocket Man” in the same speech -Pyongyang has tested missiles apparently capable of reaching much of the US mainland -- and days later Kim responded with a personal statement calling Trump a “dotard”, an obscure term for a weak or senile old man.