Kim halts nuclear meetings
President Donald Trump’s efforts to neutralise the nuclear threat posed by North Korea are in danger of running aground as the communist state cancels key meetings and returns to its belligerent rhetoric.
He emerged from an unprecedented summit meeting with Kim Jong Un last month to assure the world that ‘‘everybody can now feel much safer . . . there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea’’.
However, US diplomats have since made it known that their counterparts in Pyongyang have refused to engage in meaningful discussions. American intelligence officials have told The Washington Post that the North is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear programme and that a missile-engine testing facility that Trump said would be destroyed remains intact.
A recent trip to Pyongyang by Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, was followed by a complaint from the North that the US had made a ‘‘unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearisation’’. It described the discussions as ‘‘cancerous’’.
Trump responded by reining in expectations, tweeting last week: ‘‘There is no rush, the sanctions remain! Big benefits and exciting future for North Korea at end of process!’’
Talks over the return of the remains of US soldiers killed in the Korean War appear to have become especially contentious. Pompeo pressed North Korean diplomats on the issue this month but appears to have been stonewalled by Kim Yong Chol, the former spy chief now leading nuclear talks for the North. Pompeo arranged a meeting between the North Koreans and US military officials to discuss the matter in the demilitarised zone that separates North and South Korea on July 12. The North cancelled, after leaving their US counterparts waiting for several hours.
US officials said that the North had pledged to return 55 sets of US remains this Friday, the 65th anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War.
Failure to meet that deadline will be seen as proof of worsening relations.
There has been little sign of the two sides reaching consensus on how nuclear disarmament should be achieved. The US has pressed for the North to quickly give up its arsenal and submit to an intrusive verification system before any economic rewards are extended. The North wants sanctions to be lifted far earlier in the process.
According to The New York Times, Pompeo has said privately that he doubts that Kim will ever relinquish his nuclear weapons. Publicly, he said recently that negotiations with North Korea were a ‘‘decades-long challenge’’.