NKorea standing by its nukes
DIPLOMACY
MANILA — North Korea spurned harsh new U.N. sanctions Monday and threatened to defend itself with nuclear weapons if necessary, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson repeated an offer to bargain with the outcast nation under the right circumstances.
There was no sign at a major Asian security conference here that the sanctions hailed by President Donald Trump as a foreign policy achievement would succeed where past efforts
have failed in persuading the country to give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told diplomats that his country will never negotiate away what he called a rational “strategic option” against the threat of attack from the United States.
“We will, under no circumstances, put the nukes and ballistic rockets” up for negotiation, Ri said in prepared remarks, adding that the entire United States is within range of its missiles.
He dismissed the U.N. Security Council sanctions approved Saturday as illegal, appearing to rule out talks that the Trump administration, in a diplomatic partnership with China and Russia, is offering North Korea as a way out of its economic and diplomatic pariah status.
“The best signal that North Korea could send that they’re prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches,” Tillerson told reporters Monday at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) gathering.
The security conference in the Philippine capital was dominated by the rising threat posed by North Korea’s rapid advances in nuclear and ballistic missile technology. Those capabilities are already a threat to neighbors and U.S. allies South Korea and Japan. In two tests last month, North Korea demonstrated that it could hit major population centers in the United States, and the country is now working to perfect the technology to allow those missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
The new economic sanctions were approved amid the discussions here. The penalties are the toughest to date against a country that has been under international sanctions for more than a decade, and they carry the symbolic weight of approval by Pyongyang’s closest ally, China. They also approximate a trade embargo by targeting some of North Korea’s biggest exports, including coal.
The sanctions can work only if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un concludes that he has too much to lose by hanging on to his weapons. Kim’s calculation has been the opposite — that his weapons and the means to deliver them buy him irreplaceable leverage over the United States, his principal adversary.
China is urging Kim to consider negotiations, and it also worked alongside the United States to develop the new U.N. sanctions. Days before the unanimous Security Council vote, Tillerson made a point of saying that the United States does not consider North Korea its enemy and does not seek to invade or unseat Kim. Those reassurances were meant to encourage North Korea to meet at the bargaining table.
At the same time, Washington has issued blunt warnings that the United States will use military force if necessary, and North Korea has answered in kind.
In the printed version of his speech, Ri said Pyongyang will use nuclear weapons only against the United States or any other country that might join it in military action against North Korea.
Ri’s address here was closed to the media, so it could not be determined whether he stuck to a script delivered to reporters.
Another direct warning was aimed at the United States in a government statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“There is no bigger mistake than the United States believing that its land is safe across the ocean,” it said.
North Korea “will make the U.S. pay dearly for all the heinous crimes it commits against the state and people of this country,” the statement said.
Tillerson would not spell out a deadline for North Korea to respond to the diplomatic overture.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” he said Monday.
Tillerson and Trump spoke by phone for about an hour Monday, and Tillerson detailed the results of his discussions in Manila, the White House said.
North Korea rarely attends, or is even invited to, international forums such as the ASEAN meeting. Ri tried to make the most of it, holding meetings with the top diplomats from China and Russia, two countries that trade with North Korea and employ North Koreans as contract workers. China alone is responsible for 90 percent of North Korea’s trade.
Moscow and Beijing have proposed a “freeze for a freeze” approach, in which North Korea would suspend its missile and nuclear testing if the United States and its allies stop conducting joint military exercises in the region. Washington has rejected that.