US, North Korea: To talk or not to talk?

WASHINGTON: Now is not the time to talk to North Korea, the White House declared yesterday, as President Donald Trump appeared to undermine efforts to force Pyongyang to the table. Until this weekend, Washington’s plan to counter Kim Jong-Un’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal seemed to be to employ sanctions and diplomatic pressure to convince him to talk. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed this on Saturday in Beijing when he told reporters Washington is using diplomatic channels to probe Kim’s willingness to discuss disarmament.

But then Trump tweeted, telling his “wonderful” chief diplomat that he was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with Kim’s regime. Many commentators and former diplomats in Washington saw this as a snubeven a humiliation-for Tillerson, and rumors that the secretary might resign surfaced once again. Tillerson’s aides dismissed such talk, insisting that Trump’s tweets were a message to Kim that time was running out for him to respond to Tillerson’s overture or face tougher action. Then on Monday, Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated bluntly: “We’ve been clear that now is not the time to talk.”

Sanders told reporters the only reason to talk with Kim’s regime would be to seek the release of three Americans held in North Korean jails. “There is a difference between talking and putting diplomatic pressure-and we strongly support putting diplomatic pressure on North Korea which we’re continuing to do-but now is not the time simply to have conversations with North Korea,” she said. This would seem to contradict what Tillerson had said on Saturday, when he was asked how he would know if and when North Korea is prepared to discuss denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. “We are probing, so stay tuned,” he said.

“We ask. We have lines of communications to Pyongyang. We’re not in a dark situation, a black out,” he added. “We can talk to them, we do talk to them.” The State Department was quick to point out that these overtures had not revealed any sign that Kim is in fact ready for dialogue, but Tillerson had at least confirmed that channels are open. This had been widely suspected in Washington policy circles, but by making it front-page news Tillerson seems to have irked Trump. “The main channel is the so-called New York channel, the connection to North Korea’s diplomatic mission to the UN,” explained Jim Schoff, a former head of North Korea strategy at the Pentagon.

‘Multiple attempts’ Washington’s chief envoy for dealing with the North Korea crisis, Ambassador Joseph Yun, used this channel to Pyongyang’s diplomats in New York to negotiate the release of US student Otto Warmbier-who died after his return. “There have been, as I understand, multiple attempts for several months by that channel to try to initiate general dialogue both on the remaining Americans held there and expressing openness to talk about denuclearization,” Schoff said. Schoff, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said those connections had indeed proved “unfruitful” but warned that Trump’s dismissive tweets had weakened Tillerson’s hand. “It does hurt the secretary’s credibility,” he said. “They agreed upon a North Korean policy and strategy, and it contains an openness to dialogue. —AFP