N. Korea OKs talks on nukes
U.S. says Kim open to topic
WASHINGTON — North Korea has confirmed directly to President Donald Trump’s administration that it is willing to negotiate with the United States over potential denuclearization, administration officials said Sunday.
The confirmation offers the administration greater assurances that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is committed to a potential meeting with Trump by the end of next month.
“The U.S. has confirmed that Kim Jong Un is willing to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” an administration official said.
Whether or not Kim had genuinely offered to discuss dismantling his nuclear program was a key question surrounding his offer to meet Trump, made in March and conveyed to the U.S. via a South Korean envoy. The U.S. president accepted Kim’s offer before the U.S. could confirm the North’s offer was genuine, and a meeting between the two was promised.
But Pyongyang has been silent publicly since then about a summit, even as Kim visited Beijing last month in his first visit outside North Korea since assuming control of the country after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in 2011. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that the North has confirmed the offer to the United States.
There had been some suspicion that the meeting might not happen because North Korea still hasn’t publicly announced Kim’s offer to meet Trump. A big question was whether Kim would be willing to talk about the issue most important to Washington: dismantling his nuclear program.
Trump said last month that he was willing to have the historic meeting with Kim and instructed his aides to arrange it before the end of May. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to make a two-day visit with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s resort near Palm Beach, Fla., to coordinate
strategy between the allies. South Korean President Moon Jae-in plans to meet with Kim at the end of April in the demilitarized zone between the North and South.
White House officials have not said where the TrumpKim summit will be held. The agenda of the meeting is not yet known, and North Korea has not been clear about what steps it is willing to take to move toward denuclearization. During previous negotiations under different U.S. administrations, the North has agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for the lifting of international economic sanctions, only to violate the agreement by testing more weapons.
CNN reported on Saturday that the U.S. and North Korea have been holding secret, direct talks to prepare for the summit. That work has been led by Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick to become secretary of state. Pompeo, whose confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set for Thursday, was chosen after Trump fired Rex Tillerson as his top diplomat.
U.S. and North Korean intelligence officials have spoken more than once and even met in a third country, CNN reported. A State Department spokesman declined to comment.
CNN reported that North Korea wants to have the meeting in its capital, Pyongyang, and that preparations are underway for a possible meeting between Pompeo and the head of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea’s intelligence agency.