Britain to refuse Brexit bill without trade deal: Report

LONDON: Britain will only pay its EU divorce bill if the bloc agrees the framework for a future trade deal, the new Brexit Secretary warned in an interview published on Sunday.

Dominic Raab, who replaced David Davis after he quit the role earlier this month in protest over the government's Brexit strategy, said "some conditionality between the two" was needed.

He added that the Article 50 mechanism used to trigger Britain's imminent exit from the European Union provided for new deal details.

"Article 50 requires, as we negotiate the withdrawal agreement, that there's a future framework for our new relationship going forward, so the two are linked," Raab told the Sunday Telegraph.

"You can't have one side ful- filling its side of the bargain and the other side not, or going slow, or failing to commit on its side.

"So I think we do need to make sure that there's some conditionality between the two." The British government has sent mixed signals so far on the divorce bill.

Prime Minister Theresa May agreed in December to a financial settlement totalling 35-39 billion pound ( 46-51 billion, 39-44 billion euros) that ministers said depended on agreeing future trade ties.

But cabinet members have since cast doubt on the position.

Finance minister Philip Hammond said shortly afterwards he found it "inconceivable" Britain would not pay its bill, which he described as "not a credible scenario".

The country is set to leave the bloc on March 30, but the two sides want to strike a divorce agreement by late October in order to give parliament enough time to endorse a deal.

Raab met the EU'S top negotiator Michel Barnier for the first time on Friday, where he heard doubts over May's new Brexit blueprint for the future relationship.

But Barnier noted the priority in talks should be on finalising the initial divorce deal.

A hardline stance by the British government on the financial settlement could complicate progress, with Raab insisting on the link with the bill and a future agreement.

"Certainly it needs to go into the arrangements we have at international level with our EU partners," he told the Telegraph.

"We need to make it clear that the two are linked." May's plans formally unveiled in early July envisages a customs partnership for goods and a common rulebook with the EU.

It has faced severe criticism in Britain, including from within her own cabinet and Conservative Party.

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson and Davis both resigned in opposition. A new Yougov poll published by the Sunday Times showed just 12 per cent of people backed the proposals as "good" for Britain while 43 per cent thought they were "bad". WASHINGTON DC: The US appeal at the United Nations for "full enforcement" of sanctions against North Korea underscored the difficulty of attaining real progress on denuclearisation, more than a month after the much-vaunted Donald Trump-kim Jong Un summit.

In their joint declaration after the historic meeting on June 12 in Singapore, the North Korean leader "reaffirmed his commitment" to the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula." But the actual details of the process, including how and by what timetable the North's nuclear programme is to be dismantled, have yet to be negotiated.

At the time, the US administration insisted on the "urgency" of denuclearisation, which was supposed to begin "very quickly."

"We're hopeful we can get it done" by 2020, before the end of Trump's current presidential term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the time.

Pompeo has been charged with the challenge of putting meat on the bare bones of the Singapore commitment.

But 40 days and one apparently fruitless visit by Pompeo to Pyongyang later, the tone of the American side has clearly changed.

"We have no time limit," Trump told reporters on Wednesday. "We have no speed limit."

Asked about the change in tone, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert sought to reassure: "We have teams in place that are working very hard on this issue every day." "We have said there's a lot of work left to be done."

For several experts who had warned that the Singapore summit, for all its hype, pomp and high expectations, had provided only the barest outline of a long and arduous process, the return to reality is welcome.

"To be successful, negotiations need time," said Abraham Denmark of the Wilson Center think tank in Washington. Some experts, he added, "warn that complete and verified denuclearisation could take 15 years." So after the head-spinning events and reversals of the past six months, it may now be time to dig in for a long wait.

To some observers, moreover, the loss of momentum that Singapore should have provided is worrying. There have been few if any real advances.

Even the North's return to the US of the remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean War (1950-53), described as "immediate" on June 12, appears more complicated -- with Pompeo now saying it may take place in "the next couple of weeks."

For now, the only concrete results of the Washington-pyongyang thaw are the North's halt to nuclear and missile testing and the American side's suspension of planned military maneuvers with South Korea, long denounced as a "provocation" by Pyongyang.

The US had long rejected such a "double freeze." It involves gestures that could be reversed in a moment.

"If our goal still is the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear programme, we're not succeeding," said Sue Mi Terry of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, speaking to a security conference in Aspen, Colorado.

"Not only are they not giving up their nuclear weapons programme," she continued, "they've been working overtime on advancing their programme."

The Trump administration, criticised for failing to obtain a written promise of this key objective in Singapore, now insists negotiations are progressing toward the North's "final, fully verified" denuclearisation.

But a Pompeo visit to North Korea in early July was "by all accounts except his own deeply disappointing," said Jeffrey Bader and Ryan Hass in an article for the Brookings Institution. The problem, say the two experts, is that in Singapore, "Trump gave away much of that leverage" to ensure the North's cooperation.

And now the international campaign of "maximum pressure" on Pyongyang -- the stringent sanctions and the diplomatic isolation that Washington helped orchestrate -- is beginning to weaken.

"The sanctions are already loosening," said Terry, "because China is not really implementing" them.

Hence Pompeo's visit to the UN on Friday to condemn the erosion of the sanctions regime and to demand that the international community maintain serious pressure.

But this could be a challenge, experts say. "Maximum pressure" will be difficult to maintain in the absence of some new North Korean provocation. "In case it doesn't work, we need to have a plan," Terry said. "We don't really have a Plan B."