N. Korea offers more talks
Pyongyang, US open to further dialogue after no-deal in Hanoi
HANOI: North Korea promised further negotiations with the United States, as both sides sought to hold open the door while staking out their positions after their Hanoi summit spectacularly failed to produce a nuclear deal.
The meeting between the North’s leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump broke up in disarray on Thursday, with a signing ceremony cancelled and no joint communique issued.
Each sought to blame the other’s intransigence for the deadlock, with Trump saying that Pyongyang wanted the lifting of all sanctions imposed on it over its banned weapons programmes.
In a rare late-night press briefing, the North’s foreign minister said it had only wanted some of the measures eased, and that its offer to close “all the nuclear production facilities” at its Yongbyon complex was the best deal it could ever offer.
But the North’s official KCNA news agency reported yesterday that the two leaders had had a “constructive and candid exchange”.
Relations between the two countries – on opposite sides of the technically still unfinished Korean War – had been “characterised by mistrust and antagonism” for decades, it said, and there were “inevitable hardships and difficulties” on the way to forging a new relationship.
It described the Hanoi meeting as “successful” and said Kim had promised Trump another encounter.
Similarly Trump said before leaving the Vietnamese capital that he hoped to meet Kim again.
“Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times,” an unusually downbeat Trump told reporters.
“I’d much rather do it right than do it fast,” he said, while reaffirming his “close relationship” with Kim.
“There’s a warmth that we have and I hope that stays, I think it will.”
The outcome in Hanoi fell far short of the pre-meeting expectations and hopes, after critics said their initial historic meeting in Singapore – which produced only a vague commitment from Kim to work “towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” – was more style over substance.
According to senior US officials, in the week leading up to the Hanoi summit the North Koreans had demanded the lifting of effectively all the UN Security Council economic sanctions imposed on Pyongyang since March 2016.
Before that date, the measures were largely focused on preventing technology transfers, but more recent restrictions were imposed on several valuable industries in an effort to force concessions from Pyongyang, including coal and iron ore exports, seafood and textile trade.
“It was basically all the sanctions except for armaments,” a senior US official said. “It tallies up to the tune of many, many billions of dollars.”
In return they were only offering to close “a portion of the Yongbyon complex”, a sprawling site covering multiple different facilities – and the North is believed to have other uranium enrichment plants.
Trump had urged Kim to go “all in” to secure a deal, the official said, adding Washington was willing to do so. — AFP