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North Korea accuses US of 'gangster-like' behaviour after Pompeo talks North Korea accuses US of 'gangster-like' behaviour after Pompeo talks
(about 3 hours later)
North Korea has said that high-level talks with a US delegation led by Mike Pompeo were regrettable and accused Washington of trying to unilaterally pressurise the country into abandoning its nuclear weapons. Disarmament talks between the US and North Korea ended in Pyongyang on Saturday with the North Korean regime accusing Washington of a “gangster-like mindset” and warning of “yet another tragedy” if negotiations collapse.
The North’s statement came on Saturday, hours after the US secretary of state wrapped up two days of talks with senior North Korean officials without meeting Kim Jong-un but with commitments for new discussions on denuclearisation and the repatriation of the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean war. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, responded that if the US was a gangster, so was the whole world, as it had the same demand that North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons programme.
Before leaving Pyongyang, Pompeo told reporters that his conversations with senior North Korean official Kim Yong-chol had been productive, conducted in good faith and that a great deal of progress had been made in some areas. He stressed there was still more work to be done in other areas, much of which would be done by working groups that the two sides had set up to deal with specific issues. He insisted sanctions would remain in place until Pyongyang completed disarmament.
The North provided a much harsher assessment of the talks. In a statement released by an unnamed foreign ministry spokesman, Pyongyang accused the US of betraying the spirit of last month’s summit between Donald Trump and Kim by making “one-sided and gangster-like” demands on “CVID” – the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea. Pyongyang, however, made clear it had no intention of carrying out the comprehensive unilateral disarmament Donald Trump has claimed was the outcome of his 12 June summit in Singapore with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.
It said the outcome of the follow-up talks was very concerning because it had led to a “dangerous phase that might rattle our willingness for denuclearisation that had been firm”. In rebuffing the US approach to talks, the regime laid out its most detailed negotiating position to date, suggesting confidence-building measures each side could take, including a proposal to freeze production of intercontinental ballistic missiles and a call for a formal declaration ending the Korean war of 65 years ago.
“We had expected that the US side would offer constructive measures that would help build trust based on the spirit of the leaders’ summit … we were also thinking about providing reciprocal measures,” said the statement, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. A long detailed statement from the North Korean foreign ministry on Saturday gave an assessment of the past two days of talks between US and North Korean delegations in Pyongyang, describing them as “regrettable”. The statement flatly contradicted the upbeat assessment from Pompeo, who headed the US delegation.
“However, the attitude and stance the United States showed in the first high-level meeting [between the countries] was no doubt regrettable,” the spokesman said. “Our expectations and hopes were so naive it could be called foolish.” On leaving Pyongyang for Tokyo, Pompeo had said the two delegations had made progress on “almost all the central issues” and that on some issues there was “a great deal of progress”. Speaking later in Tokyo alongside Japanese and South Korean foreign ministers, Pompeo insisted the Pyongyang regime had accepted it would have to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme entirely.
According to the spokesman, during the talks with Pompeo, North Korea raised the issue of a possible declaration to formally end the 1950-53 Korean war, which concluded with an armistice and not a peace treaty. It also offered to discuss the closure of a missile engine test site that would “physically affirm” a move to halt the production of intercontinental range ballistic missiles and setting up working-level discussions for the return of US war remains. “From weapons systems, to fissile material, to production facilities, it’s a broad definition of denuclearisation and they have not challenged that,” he said.
However, the spokesman said the US had come up with a variety of “conditions and excuses” to delay a declaration on ending the war. The spokesman also downplayed the significance of the US suspending its military exercises with South Korea, saying the North had made a larger concession by blowing up the tunnels at its nuclear test site. Asked how he could think the North Koreans had been negotiating in good faith, Pompeo replied “Because they were.”
In criticising the talks with Pompeo, however, North Korea carefully avoided attacking Trump, saying “we wholly maintain our trust toward President Trump,” but also that Washington must not allow “headwinds” against the “wills of the leaders”. The North Korean foreign ministry statement, by contrast, adopted a wounded tone, saying hopes of progress raised by the Singapore summit between Kim Jong-un and Trump, had been dashed by the one-sided approach taken by Pompeo’s delegation.
Pompeo said a Pentagon team would be meeting North Korean officials on or about 12 July at the border between North and South Korea to discuss the repatriation of remains and that working-level talks would be held soon on the destruction of North Korea’s missile engine testing facility. In particular, the statement to took the Americans to task for insisting on complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament (CVID).
In the days following his historic 12 June summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore, Trump had announced that the return of the remains and the destruction of the missile facility had been completed or were in progress. Pompeo, however, said more talks were needed on both. But expectation and hope of ours were so naive as to be foolish
“We now have a meeting set up for 12 July. It could move by one day or two where there will be discussions between the folks responsible for the repatriation of remains. [It] will take place at the border and that process will begin to develop over the days that follow,” he said as he boarded a plane for Tokyo. “The US side came up only with its unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearisation just calling for CVID, declaration and verification, all of which run counter to the spirit of the Singapore summit meeting and talks,” the statement said.
Earlier, Pompeo and Kim Yong-chol both said they needed clarity on the parameters of an agreement to denuclearise the Korean peninsula that Trump and the North Korean leader had agreed to in Singapore. The trip was Pompeo’s third to Pyongyang since April and his first since the summit. It also complained that Pompeo’s team never mentioned “a peace regime on the Korean peninsula”, which for Pyongyang involves scaling back the US military commitment to South Korea, and the formal declaration of peace.
Unlike his previous visits, which have been one-day affairs during which he has met Kim Jong-un, Pompeo spent the night at a government guesthouse in Pyongyang and did not see the North Korean leader, although US officials had suggested such a meeting was expected. The state department spokeswoman,Heather Nauert, said no meeting with Kim had been planned. “We thought that the US side would come with a constructive proposal which is with the spirit of the [North Korea-] US summit meeting and talks. But expectation and hope of ours were so naive as to be foolish,” it said.
“It seems that the US misunderstood our goodwill and patience. The US is fatally mistaken if it went to the extent of regarding that the DPRK would be compelled to accept, out of its patience, the demands reflecting its gangster-like mindset.”
Pointedly, the foreign ministry said “We still cherish our good faith in President Trump”, suggesting that the “headwinds” to progress were being created by others.
If the talks failed, it warned “this will finally make each side seek for another choice and there is no guarantee that this will not result into yet another tragedy”.
Pompeo met the Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, on Sunday, to brief him on the Pyongyang talks. Speaking at the start of the meeting at his Tokyo residence, Abe paid tribute to the “strong leadership” Pompeo had demonstrated in Pyongyang.
“This really shows the unwavering bond of the Japan-US alliance,” the prime minister said. Pompeo later restated the US position that sanctions would remain in place until “final” North Korean denuclearisation had been carried out.
The Pyongyang talks, however, appeared to have exposed a wide gap between the way the Trump administration and Pyongyang interpreted the outcome of the Singapore summit. In a joint statement with Trump, Kim committed his regime to move towards “complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.
Trump took it to mean total and unilateral nuclear disarmament. He returned to the US claiming North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat”. Last week in Montana, he told a crowd: “But we signed a wonderful paper saying they’re going to denuclearise their whole thing. It’s going to all happen.”
However, since 1992, the regime has used the phrase, “complete denuclearisation” to mean a drawn out, phased process of mutual demilitarisation of the peninsula.
In Singapore, Trump and Kim also agreed verbally on mutual confidence-building measures, in which Trump would suspend military exercises with South Korea, while Kim would dismantle a missile engine testing site and repatriate the remains of some US soldiers killed in the Korean war.
Trump immediately ordered the suspension of what he called US-South Korea “war games”, dismissing them as too expensive. However, Pyongyang has yet to deliver on its side of the bargain – destroying the test site and sending back the soldiers’ remains.
Saturday’s foreign ministry statement lays out an expanded North Korean version of what mutual confidence-building measures would look like.
It said Pyongyang would dismantle the “high thrust engine” testing site as a concrete measure towards “the suspension of ICBM production as part of denuclearisation steps” while making a start of “working level talks” on repatriation of remains.
In return the US would make “public a declaration on the end of war” on the 65th anniversary of the Korean war armistice, which falls on 27 July.
It remains unclear how Trump will respond to the withering North Korean rhetoric. So far he has ignored suggestions that he achieved little of substance in Singapore.
Colin Kahl, former national security advisor to vice-president Joe Biden, assessed the latest developments in a tweet.
“The good news: If diplomacy continues to stall, Trump will probably not go back on the war path because that would require him to admit he got suckered by Kim,” Kahl said. “The bad news: He got suckered by Kim.”
Soon afterwards, Susan Rice, who was national security advisor to Barack Obama, replied on Twitter.
“No, Colin, once he realises he got suckered, he will go on the war path to try to prove his manhood. He will manufacture some excuse other than his own gullibility,” Rice said. “This will get dicey again.”
North KoreaNorth Korea
Asia PacificAsia Pacific
Mike PompeoMike Pompeo
Donald TrumpDonald Trump
Kim Jong-unKim Jong-un
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