Much on the table at Trump-Kim II
Peace declaration possible, but some fear the price tag
WASHINGTON — Negotiators for President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are discussing a possible deal for their upcoming summit that would include a declaration ending the Korean War in return for verifiable steps to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear program, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Those and other contentious issues remain unresolved before Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet Feb. 27-28 in Hanoi, Vietnam, the officials said.
Among the crucial sticking points: whether the United States would ease international sanctions before or after North Korea takes confirmed steps to curb its development and production of nuclear weapons.
The two leaders committed to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula when they first met last June 12 in Singapore, but they did not set up any step-by-step disarmament schedule for how to achieve that goal.
The uncertainty is raising concerns both in and out of the administration that Trump, in his second attempt to reach a historic diplomatic breakthrough with Kim, will agree to a headline-grabbing peace declaration and offer other U.S. concessions without locking in significant commitments from Pyongyang.
“We’re not there yet,” said a senior U.S. official familiar with the working-level talks aimed at hammering out as much of an agreement as possible before the TrumpKim summit. “The denuclearization piece is obviously the hard part.”
Trump could view a nonbinding peace declaration for the 1950-53 Korean War as a signature diplomatic achievement, one he might grasp at even if it did not include ironclad requirements by North Korea to scale back its weapons programs.
“What I fear is that President Trump might be using a peace declaration as a way to bake in success for the Vietnam summit with a dramatic announcement for the end of a 70-year war,” said Jung Pak, who served as deputy national intelligence officer at the CIA until early in Trump’s term.
Joel Wit, a former U.S. diplomat who helped reach and implement a 1994 agreement with North Korea, believes a declaration is “close to a done deal,” calling it a first step in a “fairly long road toward” closer economic and diplomatic ties and other confidence-building steps that could end the nuclear threat.
The peace declaration under discussion would be a political statement rather than a legally binding treaty. A treaty would require approval by all the signatories to the armistice that ended the three-year conflict and might need to be ratified by Congress and the U.N. Security Council.
Analysts say Kim is likely to demand more from Trump than a peace declaration and will pressure him to ease sanctions unilaterally or scale back the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea.
“One of the biggest fears of Korea watchers is that Trump will give away a big-ticket item like troop reduction,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, a North Korea expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan think tank.
Eliminating Pyongyang’s secret nuclear weapons capabilities and long-range ballistic missile programs would require hundreds of international nuclear inspectors to help dismantle warheads, shut down enrichment and production facilities, interview North Korean scientists, unravel procurement systems, and tag and monitor bomb-making equipment, experts say.
There is little indication Kim is prepared to agree to such a massive undertaking — or that Trump officials are even seeking such a farreaching deal at the Hanoi summit. Trump last year pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear accord that included many of those provisions, saying it was inadequate.
North Korea has halted all nuclear and missile tests since the Singapore summit, and the United States has suspended joint military training exercises with South Korean forces, in what has been dubbed a freeze-for-a-freeze.
The Pentagon says it is still conducting small-scale joint exercises with South Korea and is prepared to help defend the country if necessary.
While tensions have eased, North Korea has not relaxed its nuclear posture and has taken no major steps to scale back or dismantle its nuclear infrastructure or program, according to U.S. intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
Trump has boasted frequently about his deal-making prowess and his close relationship with Kim, implying that his skeptical intelligence advisers did not appreciate the progress he had made in changing the adversarial U.S.-North Korea relationship.
“Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” Trump tweeted last month after top U.S. intelligence officials told Congress that the leadership in Pyongyang was unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons, viewing them as central to its survival.
The meager results from the Singapore summit appear to have prompted administration officials to opt for a more gradual process this time, involving reciprocal steps carried out over many years.
Kim has committed in talks with U.S. officials “to the dismantlement and destruction of North Korea’s plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities,” Steve Biegun, the administration’s special envoy to North Korea, said in a speech last month at Stanford University.
But Kim had qualified that commitment to be “upon the United States taking corresponding measures,” Biegun noted.
Analysts said Kim might agree to decommission or dismantle the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, the North’s main uranium enrichment facility. But that would leave dozens of other secret sites where it carries out nuclear and missile development.