North wants U.S. talks, vows missile hiatus, S. Korea says
TOKYO — North Korea has vowed not to test missiles or nuclear weapons during proposed talks with the United States and South Korea, officials from South Korea said Tuesday after returning from meetings in Pyongyang.
North Korea said it was prepared to hold “candid talks” with the U.S. about denuclearization and normalizing relations and “made it clear” that it would not perform tests while engaged in dialogue, the officials said upon returning to Seoul.
North Korea did not confirm South Korea’s version of events, saying simply that the two sides “made a satisfactory agreement” during the meeting between the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and envoys sent by the South’s president, Moon Jae-in.
Yet North Korea has previously said it would give up its nuclear weapons and has reneged on every deal it has ever signed. The scope of any proposed talks also remained unclear. At various times, Pyongyang has demanded the full withdrawal of the U.S.
military from South Korea or the withdrawal of “nuclear” troops and weapons — of which there currently are none in the South. Pyongyang had also demanded the cancellation of U.S. military exercises in exchange for eliminating its own weapons.
Similarly, President Donald Trump’s administration has not clarified whether North Korea must pledge the “denuclearization” Trump has demanded as a precondition for substantive talks.
But the sudden thaw could, at the very least, bring about a reprieve in the months of acute tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Trump, who last fall told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that he was “wasting his time” trying to talk with the North, tweeted Tuesday that “possible progress” had been made in North Korea’s capital and that all sides were making serious efforts. He added: “May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!”
Later, at a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Trump largely attributed the progress to sanctions and to U.S. foreign policy.
“I think they are sincere, but I think they are sincere also because of the sanctions and what we’re doing in respect to North Korea,” Trump said, describing the measures as “very strong and very biting.” He also said “the great help we’ve been given from China” has played a role, although there have been repeated reports of North Korea using Chinese companies to evade international sanctions.
U.S. intelligence officials were doubtful about Tuesday’s alleged progress.
“I’m quite skeptical about all of this,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Maybe this is a breakthrough. I seriously doubt it, but hope springs eternal.”
Coats and other intelligence officials at the hearing said they had seen no evidence of a turnaround in North Korean behavior.
Coats added that Kim is “very calculating” and views his nuclear capabilities as “essential to his well-being as well as the well-being of his nation.”
Lawmakers, while noting that North Korea should not be trusted, stressed that even imperfect talks were better than no talks.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who has been leading the Armed Services Committee hearings in the absence of committee chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., counted himself “a little more optimistic” than Coats.
“It is something that is kind of unprecedented in coming forth and saying under some conditions he would follow the denuclearization,” he said.
The Korean overtures come at a time when the United States has no ambassador in South Korea and no special representative on North Korea, and when the nominee for assistant secretary of state for East Asia has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
Later Tuesday, the State Department announced that it had imposed new sanctions against the North for ordering the assassination last year of Kim’s estranged half brother with a banned nerve agent. North Korea has denied the accusation.
The State Department announcement said the U.S. had formally determined Feb. 22 that North Korea was responsible for ordering the killing and that the sanctions took effect Monday. Under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Con- trol and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991, the finding added to existing U.S. sanctions “targeting unlawful North Korean activities,” the department spokesman, Heather Nauert, said in a statement.
“The United States strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons to conduct an assassination,” Nauert said.
‘CANDID DIALOGUE’
On returning from Pyongyang, Chung Eui-yong, South Korea’s national security director, said North Korea expressed willingness to hold a “candid dialogue” with the United States to discuss its nuclear disarmament and establish diplomatic relations.
Chung said North Korea “made it clear that it won’t resume strategic provocations like additional nuclear tests or test-launches of ballistic missiles” while such talks are underway.
North Korea also said it would not need to keep its nuclear weapons if the U.S. drops its military threats and provides a credible security guarantee, Chung said. That reflects a longstanding demand from North Korea, which opposes the presence of nearly 30,000 U.S. forces in South Korea. Chung said the North promised not to use its nuclear and conventional weapons against South Korea.
While in Pyongyang, Chung and a delegation he led had a four-hour dinner with Kim and his wife as well as other senior officials, including Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, who visited South Korea for the opening of the Winter Olympics last month.
“The dinner proceeded in a warm atmosphere overflowing with compatriotic feelings,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency
said in a report, one of several that mentioned the Koreans’ shared blood and implied that they were united together against the outside world.
Arms control advocates said the developments greatly improve the prospects for peace and security in the region.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association, urged the Trump administration and Congress to support “this important diplomatic opening.”
An initial hurdle, however, could be presented by U.S.South Korean military drills that were postponed during the Olympics and are due to resume next month. North Korea is likely to push for a suspension of the drills, which it views as a provocation and a threat, and may ask for relief from U.S.led economic sanctions.
Vice President Mike Pence, who also attended the Olympics’ opening ceremonies, said the United States and its allies seek to keep “maximum pressure” on the North if talks emerge or not.
“All options are on the table and our posture toward the regime will not change until we see credible, verifiable, and concrete steps toward denuclearization,” Pence said in a statement.
In South Korea during the Olympics, Pence met with the president, Moon. But a planned encounter with Kim’s sister was scrapped by North Korea.
If events play out the way Seoul hopes, Moon will be meeting Kim for a summit on the southern side of the inter-Korean border late next month.
Moon’s progressive predecessors both traveled to Pyongyang for summits with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il. Analysts had said it would be unseemly for a South Korean leader to make the same trip a third time.
The two sides agreed that the next summit will be held inside Peace House at Panmunjom, the “truce village” straddling the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula. The house is just over the southern side of the borderline.
This would be the first time since the Korean War ended in 1953 that the North Korean leader had crossed into the South and the first meeting between Kim and another head of state in his six years in power.
The two Koreas also agreed to establish a hotline between the leaders of the two sides to ease military tensions and to be able to consult closely. They will test the line with a phone call before the summit.
“This is a potentially significant development, but it’s too soon to judge,” said Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. The Trump administration would want to hear the same message directly from the North Koreans, he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Anna Fifield, Philip Rucker, Karen DeYoung and Brian Murphy of The Washington Post; by Robert Burns, Hyung-jin Kim, Darlene Superville and Matthew Pennington of The Associated Press; and by Rick Gladstone of