N. Korea presses demand for formal end to Korean War
U.S.: Move may be aimed at its military presence in S. Korea.
Choe Sang Hun SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — North Korea pressed its demand Friday that the United States agree to declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, as South Korea’s leader indicated that the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was preparing for his fourth visit to the North.
Pompeo, the point man in President Donald Trump’s efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, has been struggling to follow up on the agreement reached between Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, when they met in Singapore in June in the first summit between their nations.
In Singapore, Kim committed to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But the summit agreement lacked details on how to achieve that goal, and Pompeo and his team of negotiators has struggled since then to win concrete action on this front from their North Korean counterparts.
When he met with representatives of political parties in Seoul on Thursday, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea said that negotiations between the United States and North Korea have recently gained “speed,” with Pompeo plan- ning to visit North Korea again, according to Yun So-ha, an opposition leader, who briefed reporters on the meeting.
On Thursday, Pompeo said his team was “continuing to make progress” with the North Koreans, and said he hoped that “we can make a big step here before too long.”
“We’re continuing to engage in conversation with them
The latest hitch in negotiations has been over North Korea’s demand that the United States join the two Koreas in declaring an end to the Korean War.
The conflict was halted with an armistice that was signed in 1953, but for decades the North has demanded that the United States negotiate a peace treaty to formally end the war. about a path forward to a brighter future for the North Koreans,” Pompeo said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
Pompeo first met with Kim in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Easter weekend and again in May to help prepare for Trump’s summit with Kim. He again visited Pyongyang last month to urge North Korea to carry out the Singapore summit deal by moving quickly toward denuclearization, but notably failed to meet with Kim. At the end of this visit, North Korea called his demands for denuclearization “gangster-like.”
The State Department has yet to announce whether and when Pompeo planned to visit North Korea again.
Recently, North Korea has renewed its push for a political statement in which the two Koreas and the United States — and perhaps, China too — jointly declare an end to the war, as a preludeto complex negotiations for replacing the armistice with a peace treaty.
Moon supports the proposal, arguing that such a statement will help ease tensions and encourage North Korea to denuclearize. When he met with Kim in April for their first summit, the two Korean leaders agreed to push for such a declaration this year.
But U.S. officials fear that North Korea may be seeking such a declaration to undermine the rationale for the U.S. military presence in South Korea without getting any commitment by Pyongyang to relinquish its nuclear weapons.