Pence raises prospect of talks, applies ‘maximum pressure’

SEOUL: The United States has appeared to endorse deeper post-Olympics engagement between South and North Korea that could lead to direct US talks, but has agreed with Seoul that sanctions must be intensified to push Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

With South Korea considering a rare summit with the North, Vice President Mike Pence said in a newspaper interview that Washington and Seoul had agreed, in discussions on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, on the basic terms to guide future diplomatic contacts with North Korea.

The prospect of negotiations comes after months of tension between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, with US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un trading insults and threats of destruction amid tightening sanctions from the United Nations.

Speaking to the Washington Post on his way home from the Games, Mr Pence said Washington would step up its “maximum pressure campaign” against Pyongyang but at the same time would be open to talks without pre-conditions.

“The point is, no pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step toward denuclearization,” Mr Pence was quoted on Sunday as saying. “So the maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify. But if you want to talk, we’ll talk.”

Mr Pence’s overture, which raised again the possibility of direct talks floated previously by some Trump aides, also appeared aimed at regaining the initiative for the Trump administration after the vicepresident was widely seen as having been outmanoeuvred in an Olympics public relations battle with Mr Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-jong.

She charmed her South Korean hosts despite scepticism about the North Korean leader’s sincerity, fuelling concerns among some analysts in both Washington and Seoul that the North-South thaw could drive a wedge between the two allies.

Washington was caught off guard by the effectiveness of the North Korean propaganda campaign, US officials said. “Kim ran an end run on us, and he had some success, at least in the opinion section,” one senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But given conflicting signals in the past from Mr Trump and his aides over diplomacy with North Korea, it remained unclear whether Mr Pence’s remarks would mean a shift in US strategy.

At the same time, North Korea recently has shown no interest in talking to the United States and has made clear it has no intention of negotiating away its nuclear and missile programmes.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday it was too early to judge whether the latest developments represented the start of a diplomatic process.

In December, Mr Tillerson offered to open talks with North Korea without preconditions, but the State Department later said there would first have to be a “period of calm” in which Pyongyang suspends nuclear and missile testing.

“We’ve said for some time it’s really up to the North Koreans to decide when they’re ready to engage with us in a sincere way, a meaningful way,” Mr Tillerson told reporters in Egypt. “They know what has to be on the table for conversations.”

Mr Trump, in office since January 2017, has at times questioned the purpose of further talks with the North after years of negotiations by previous US administrations failed to halt the North’s weapons programmes.

Last year, North Korea conducted dozens of missile launches and its sixth and largest nuclear test as it pursues its goal of developing a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the United States.