[ad_1]
U.S. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Singapore last month for a signing ceremony between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump.
Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images
hide the legend
subtitle
Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images
U.S. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives for a signing ceremony between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Singapore last month.
Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travels to North Korea on Thursday to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other senior officials.
His mission: to flesh out the details of a vaguely worded joint statement that Kim signed with President Trump in Singapore last month
In this document, the United States pledges security badurances for Korea North. work towards a complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. "
There are doubts, however, about the severity of Pyongyang After the announcement of Secretary Pompeo's trip to Pyongyang on Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders received questions about information that North Korea is developing sites related to its nuclear weapons program, with the intention of giving up its nuclear arsenal.
"We will not confirm or refute the reports intelligence, "replied Sanders." What I can tell you is that we continue to progress. "
Others are a little less optimistic for this next round of negotiations
"Pompeo goes to Pyongyang with a very difficult task," says Abraham Denmark, Asia Program Director at the Wilson Center.
A senior Pentagon official under the Obama administration, Denmark fears that with the suspension by President Trump from a mili exercise South Korea next month, North Korea has already won a lot and abandoned very little. do not take new commitments in Singapore, and the state secretary is now forced to go to Pyongyang to try to secure something that the president could not do, "says Denmark. "The real question is whether Kim Jong Un really is interested in denuclearization."
Trump, for example, seems to think that he is.
"I made a deal with him, I shook his hand, I really think he thinks it," Trump told Fox News on July 1 when he was asked to s & # 39; 39, he believed that Kim Jong Un
. National Security Advisor John Bolton insisted that the Trump administration did not have any illusions about North Korea.
"There is no feeling of starry among the group doing this," said Bolton . "We are well, well aware of what North Koreans have done in the past."
Bolton essentially gave North Korea one year to get rid of his nuclear weapons.
"We have developed a program, I am sure that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will discuss with the North Koreans, how to dismantle all their ballistic missile programs [weapons of mbad destruction] in one year," said Mr. Bolton, establishing a schedule much faster than many disarmament experts believe achievable. "If they have the strategic decision already made to do so, and that they are cooperative, we can act very quickly. "
Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association says it's a big" if "."
"Kim Jong Un has not yet made the strategic decision to abandon nuclear weapons, "says Davenport, who heads the nonproliferation policy at the Washington Think Tank.
Davenport highlights Kim Jong Un's New Year's Day speech this year, in which the northern leader -Korean announces that his country will pbad the test of og nuclear weapons to mbad production.
"This requires the continued production of fissile material, Davenport argues that" the activities there demonstrate that North Korea continues to make progress towards this goal, and that the United States has not yet attempted to continue to develop their nuclear weapons program. "
says the Wilson Center of Denmark, must be recognized as a de facto nuclear state." We have a potential situation where the United States thinks it is entering a state of affairs. denuclearization negotiations, while North Korea is trying to start arms control negotiations, "notes Denmark," where their nuclear program, their missile program is limited yet able to exist and even in to some extent, it is recognized by the United States, by the international community. "
Yet, at a hearing in the Senate last week, the Secretary of State for Defense insisted that North Korea understood very well what the United States meant by full denuclearization. "If North Korea does not engage in a complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization process," said Montana Republican Steve Daines, "would you commit to leaving the table?" Negotiations? "
"
But in a July 3 tweet Trump says that everything is fine with Pyongyang. "If it's not for me," he wrote, "we would be now at war with North Korea! "
Many good conversations with North Korea – it's going well! In the meantime, no rocket launch or nuclear test in 8 months. All Asia is thrilled Only the opposition party, which includes the false news, complains, if it was not For me, we would now be at war with North Korea!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2018
[ad_2]
Source link
