Trump adviser wary of N. Korea promises
SEOUL, South Korea — President Donald Trump’s national security adviser reacted coolly Sunday to word that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told his South Korean counterpart that he would be willing to give up his nuclear weapons if the U.S. commits to a formal end to the Korean War and a pledge not to attack the North.
Asked on CBS’ Face the
Nation whether the U.S. would make such a promise, John Bolton said: “Well, we’ve heard this before. This is — the North Korean propaganda playbook is an infinitely rich resource.”
“What we want to see from them is evidence that it’s real and not just rhetoric,” he added.
Seoul officials said Sunday that Kim also vowed during his meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday to shut down the North’s nuclear test site in May and disclose the process to experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States.
While there are lingering questions about whether North Korea will ever decide to fully relinquish its nuclear weapons as it heads into negotiations with the U.S.,
Kim’s comments amount to the North’s most specific acknowledgement yet that “denuclearization” would constitute surrendering its weapons.
Bolton said the United States isn’t ready to ease sanctions or offer other concessions to North Korea before Pyongyang fully commits to denuclearization.
“I think that’s what denuclearization means,” he said during an interview on Fox News Sunday. He later said that the Trump administration isn’t “starry-eyed” when it comes to Kim’s recent promises.
He spoke cautiously about the chances of reaching a deal and laid out a plan for the dismantling of the North’s nuclear program, perhaps over a twoyear period. That would be accompanied by a “full, complete, total disclosure of everything related to their nuclear program with a full international verification,” Bolton said.
Bolton cited a similar arrangement the United States brokered with Libya in 2003 that resulted in the country relinquishing its weapons, as well as a 1992 pact between North and South Korea under which Pyongyang was to have given up “any aspect of nuclear weapons,” he said, including uranium enrichment.
“Now we’ve got other things to talk about, as well — ballistic missiles, chemical and biological weapons, the American hostages, the Japanese abductees,” Bolton later said. “But starting on the nuclear side with what North Korea agreed to nearly a quarter-century ago is a pretty good place to start.”
Kim’s apparent willingness to negotiate away his nuclear arsenal was revealed as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke for the first time about a “good conversation” he had with Kim during his secret visit to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, over Easter weekend.
Pompeo told ABC News in a broadcast Sunday that the Trump administration’s objective was “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea, and that Kim was prepared to “lay out a map that would help us achieve” denuclearization.
“My goal was to try and identify if there was a real opportunity there. I believe there is,” Pompeo said on This Week.
“We had an extensive conversation on the hardest issues that face our two countries,” Pompeo said. “I had a clear mission statement from President Trump. When I left, Kim Jong Un understood the mission exactly as I described it today.”
Asked about potential outcomes, Pompeo said he “talked about getting the release of the American detainees. And then we talked a great deal about what it might look like, what this complete, verifiable, irreversible mechanism might look like.”
Yet he declined to say whether there would be any reward for North Korea — perhaps in the form of sanctions relief — if it took additional, early steps toward dismantling its nuclear program.
“We have our eyes wide open,” Pompeo said multiple times.
GIVING UP NUKES
Seoul officials, who have shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington to broker talks between Kim and Trump that are expected in May or June, said Kim has expressed genuine interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons.
Kim also expressed optimism about his meeting with Trump, Moon’s spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.
“They will see that I am not the kind of person who would shoot nuclear weapons to the south, over the Pacific or at the United States,” Kim told Moon, according to Yoon’s account.
It was another in a series of startling statements by Kim, whose country threatened to do exactly those things during the height of nuclear tensions last year.
Yoon also quoted Kim as saying: “If we maintain frequent meetings and build trust with the United States and receive promises for an end to the war and a nonaggression treaty, then why would we need to live in difficulty by keeping our nuclear weapons?”
During their summit at a village on the border, Moon and Kim promised to work toward the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula but made no references to verification or timetables.
There has been skepticism because North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of “denuclearization”
that bears no resemblance to the American definition. The North has long vowed to pursue nuclear development unless Washington removes its 28,500 troops from South Korea and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan.
The Korean Peninsula technically remains in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War was halted with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Kim also said he was prepared to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Moon spoke with Abe over the weekend and “offered to lay a bridge between North Korea and Japan,” another presidential spokesman said.
Today, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the border with North Korea on Tuesday. The announcement said Seoul expects Pyongyang to do the same.
South Korea had turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday’s summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts.
Also today, China announced that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Pyongyang on Wednesday and Thursday.
TESTING SITE
The closing of the nuclear test site would be a dramatic but likely symbolic event to set up Kim’s summit with Trump. North Korea already announced this month that it has suspended all tests of nuclear devices and intercontinental ballistic missiles and plans to close its nuclear testing ground.
Analysts reacted with skepticism to Kim’s previously announced plan to close down the test site at Punggye-ri, saying the northernmost tunnel had already become too unstable to use for underground detonations after the country in September conducted its sixth and most powerful test.
In his conversation with Moon, Kim denied that he would be merely clearing out damaged goods, saying the site also has two new tunnels that are larger than previous testing facilities, Yoon said.
“Some say that we are terminating facilities that are not functioning, but you will see that we have two more tunnels that are bigger than the existing ones and that they are in good condition,” Yoon quoted Kim as saying.
There have been reports that the test site, buried under Mount Mantap, was suffering from “tired mountain syndrome” and was unusable after September’s nuclear test, which caused an earthquake so big that satellites caught images of the mountain above the site actually moving.
But numerous nuclear experts have cast doubt on that theory, and Kim apparently did, too.
North Korea has invited the outside world to witness the dismantling of its nuclear facilities before. In June 2008, international broadcasters were allowed to air the demolition of a cooling tower at the Nyongbyon reactor site, a year after the North reached an agreement with the U.S. and four other nations to disable its nuclear facilities in return for an aid package worth about $400 million.
All the while, it turned out North Korea was building a separate uranium enrichment facility so it could continue to produce fissile material even without Nyongbyon.
The deal eventually collapsed after North Korea refused to accept U.S.-proposed verification methods, and the country in May 2009 conducted its second nuclear test detonation.
In another conciliatory gesture toward South Korea, Kim made his own pledge of nonaggression toward the South.
“I am determined not to repeat the painful history of the Korean War. As the same nation living on the same land, we should never shed blood again,” he told Moon, according to Yoon.
Kim even vowed to readjust his country’s clock to match the time zone in South Korea, which with the rest of the region runs 30 minutes ahead of the North’s.
“When I was sitting in the waiting room, I saw two clocks on the wall, one of the Seoul time and the other of the Pyongyang time, and I felt bad about it,” Kim was quoted as telling Moon. “Why don’t we reunify our clocks first?”