A question for Kim
In North Korea talks, bring up rogue arms sales
As President Donald Trump and Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo prepare for the president’s upcoming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, there is one item that Mr. Trump should raise with Mr. Kim, although it is sensitive — its sale of arms to Egypt, in defiance of international sanctions.
Raising the topic will cause North Korea to argue that because of economic sanctions that the U.S. and other countries have imposed, it is obliged to take actions like selling arms to Egypt to bring in money. Therefore, get rid of the sanctions, like you did with Iran when you wanted a deal on nuclear weapons. That response on Mr. Kim’s part could lead into difficult, potentially circular argumentation.
A variable has already been introduced into the upcoming meeting: There is talk in Washington of postponing a meeting with Mr. Kim while the new secretary of state gets installed. That risks the opportunity to open dialogue on a range of important subjects, starting with North Korea’s nuclear arms program. The change in secretaries of state might make sense, but the problem is that in the meantime, one party might do something that the other would consider to be provocative enough to cancel the talks.
The North Koreans might fire off another intercontinental ballistic missile. The United States and the South Koreans might get carried away with the joint military exercises they have scheduled in the region. The Chinese, Japanese and Russians might decide they don’t like the idea of the Kim-Trump talks and do something to blow them up, or to push someone else to blow them up. The continuation of the prospect of the talks is vulnerable to say the least, given the prickly relations in the region among all the parties concerned.
In any case, the United States should talk to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi about his country’s lethal “buy” from North Korea. Moreover, North Korea uses its embassy in Cairo as a base to conduct sales of arms throughout the region, with Egypt’s tacit approval. The military relationship between the two countries stretches back decades.
The United States provides Egypt some $1.3 billion in aid annually. The Egyptians are going to say they don’t pay the North Koreans with American-provided money, and that what they buy from whom is their business. It is also, however, the case that aid of that sort is very fungible. If the United States pays for “x,” that frees Egypt to use other funds in hand to pay the North Koreans for arms. So, in effect, the United States is reimbursing North Korea for its arms sales to Egypt. That’s not exactly what America would want to do.
The subject is messy, but it needs to be on the agenda of U.S. talks with North Korea, and with Egypt, on as urgent a basis as possible.