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WASHINGTON – 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 went to Pyongyang the return could begin "in the coming weeks." But it could take months or years to positively identify bones like those of specific US military.
In a joint statement at their Singapore summit, President Donald Trump and Ruler Kim Jong Un are committed to recovering the remains of prisoners of war and 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 taken place, this was not the case. 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 specifics promised by the North.
"We are progressing along the border to recover the remains, a very important problem for these families," said Pompeo on Wednesday. White House. "I think in the next few 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 The North War remains "already identified". She apparently has bones and perhaps associated personal belongings, but history shows that remains left by the North may 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 Pentagon's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.He said that this element of the Singapore Declaration "reflects an almost total ignorance of the role of science" in the accounting of the dead
There is even some doubt that any remains returned would be Americans Trump admitted so much into an interview with CBS News July 14.
"You know, rest is 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 assertion on June 20 in Duluth, Minnesota: "We recovered our great fallen heroes, the remains returned Today, 200 people have already
Richard Downes, whose father, Air Force Lieutenant Hal Downes, is among the missing in the Korean War, says hopes may have been raised too quickly . "
Hope has long supported Downes and thousands of other Americans seeking closure after decades of uncertainty about a missing parent of the war. The Pentagon reports that 7,699 US troops are missing in Korea, including about 5,300 in the North. Downes, 70, was 3.5 years old when his father's B-26 Invader fell on 13 January 1952, northeast of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Her family was left to question her fate. Downes is now Executive Director of the Coalition of Families of Prisoners of War and Korean POWs and the Cold War, who advocate restitution of remains.
The Singapore declaration could prove to be an important breakthrough. The fulfillment of his promise, however, turns out to be more difficult 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 program of negotiations between the United States and North Korea – the return of the remains of the soldiers of the Korean War – turns out to be another point of stumbling. "
Beyond the initial return of remains The State Department said Sunday that both parties have agreed to resume searches of burial sites of US remnants of war in North Korea. This effort was suspended by the United States in 2005. This raises another sensitive issue to negotiate: how much the United States would pay in the North for this access. In the past, he paid millions of dollars, saying that the money was a "fair and reasonable compensation" for Northern aid, not for the payment of bones or information . political goals such as progress towards a peace treaty to replace the armistice agreement that ended the fighting on the Korean peninsula in July 1953. The North sees this political goal as an essential element to ending what he calls Washington's hostile policy toward the North. The turning point 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 yet been developed. has been developed. Tuesday, Trump seemed to reveal his own doubts about the timing. He told reporters, "We have no hurry for speed," adding, "We are just going through the process."
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Ken Thomas, associate editor of the Associated Press, contributed to this report. Press. All rights reserved. This document may not be published, distributed, rewritten or redistributed.
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