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More than a month after North Korea promised to immediately make war on Americans, the promise is not kept.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Pyongyang this month to pressure North Koreans. the return could begin "in the next two weeks". But it will take months or years to positively identify the bones of American soldiers.
In a joint statement at the Singapore summit, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to recover the remains of prisoners of war. and those missing in action decades after the Korean War – "including the immediate repatriation of those already identified".
More than a month ago, June 12th. Although Trump said eight days later that the repatriation had occurred, he had not. He still does not have any. So it was not "immediate", although the Stars and Stripes newspaper reported Tuesday in South Korea that the North had agreed to transfer up to 55 sets of remains next week. The Pentagon and the State Department refused to comment on the details promised by the North.
"We are moving along the border to get the remains back, a very important issue for these families," Pompeo said Wednesday. the White House. "I think in the next two weeks we will have the first leftovers, it's commitment, so some progress is definitely being made there."
Probably also to prove false is the part of the Trump-Kim statement that said North had the war still "already identified".
He apparently has bones and perhaps badociated personal belongings, but history shows that all the remains handed over by the North are likely to be difficult to identify. In recent days, the state department has changed this phrase to "already collected," suggesting that he realized that the remains have not been identified.
"There are no missing Americans who have been" already identified "by the DPRK (North Korea)" Paul Cole, who has been studying the problems of the Korean War for decades and served for four years as a research scientist at the Central Identification Laboratory of the Pentagon in Hawaii.
He said that this element of the Singapore Declaration "reflects an almost total ignorance of the role of science", in counting the war dead.
There is even some doubt that everything will be returned from the US Trump has admitted so much in an interview with CBS News on July 14.
"You know, the remains are complicated" , he said. "Some of the remains, they do not even know if they are leftovers."
This is a big step back from his false badertion on June 20 in Duluth, Minnesota : "We recovered our fallen great heroes, the remains sent today, 200 perso have already been returned.
Richard Downes, whose father, Air Force Lieutenant Hal Downes, is among those missing from the Korean War, says that hopes may have been raised too quickly . The statement was exaggerated, "he said," exacerbated by our hope that it was accurate. "
Hope has long supported Downes and thousands of other Americans who Seeking closure after decades of uncertainty over a missing relative of the war.The Pentagon says that 7699 US servicemen are missing in Korea, including about 5300 in the North.
Downes, 70, was 3 years old and a half when his father's B-26 Invader fell on January 13, 1952, northeast of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.His family was left to question his fate.
Downes is now executive director of the Coalition of Families of Prisoners of War and Korean Prisoners of War and the Cold War, which pleads for restitution of the remains.
The Singapore Declaration could turn out to be a important breakthrough, the fulfillment of its promise, however, turns out to be harder than Trump has made him believe.
As Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute of Strategic Studies put it in an online essay last week, "What was supposed to be the easiest element on the The negotiating agenda between the United States and North Korea – the return of the remains of the Korean War soldiers – turns out to be another point of friction. "
Beyond the initial return of remnants that the North The State Department said Sunday that both sides have agreed to resume searches for the burial sites of US remnants of war in North Korea.
This effort was suspended by the United States in 2005. This raises another tricky question to negotiate: how much the United States would pay the North for this access.
In the past, he paid millions of dollars, saying that the US would not pay for it. money was a "fair and reasonable compensation" for the help of the No rd, not the payment of bones or information
. bait to achieve political goals such as progress towards a peace treaty to replace the armistice agreement that ended fighting on the Korean peninsula in July 1953.
The North sees this political goal as an essential element to put an end to Washington's hostile policy. to the North, which in turn is linked to its desire to abandon its nuclear weapons.
The Singapore summit focused on Trump's efforts to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons.
He later stated that there was no longer any nuclear threat from the North, although Kim agreed to "work towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula", and no detailed plan has not been developed.
On Tuesday, Trump seemed to reveal his own doubts about timing. He told reporters, "We have no hurry for speed," adding, "We are just going through the process."
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