North Korea Kim wants another Trump summit to accelerate denuclearization: South Korea's moon

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea's Kim Jong Un wants a second summit with US President Donald Trump to speed up denuclearization, but one of the main goals is to end the 1950-53 Korean war. the president Thursday.

He and Moon spent most of a three-day summit discussing how to break a stalemate and revive nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington, which should be denuclearization or the end of the war.

Kim, who recently proposed another summit with Trump after the unprecedented June talks in Singapore, said the north was ready to "dismantle" the missile facilities in the presence of outside experts and the main Yongbyon nuclear complex. action.

The summit's joint declaration states its commitment to "irreversible and verifiable dismantling" of nuclear programs, and the end of the war would be a first step in reciprocity in the United States, Moon said.

"President Kim has expressed his wish to quickly end denuclearization and focus on economic development," Moon said at a press conference in Seoul, shortly after returning from the summit with Kim to Pyongyang. .

"He hoped that a second summit with Trump would take place in the near future, in order to speed up the process of denuclearization."

INSPECTIONS

Moon said Kim was also open to inspecting a nuclear test site in the northwestern town of Punggye-ri, which he described as the only existing underground detonation facility.

While Pyongyang ended its nuclear and missile tests this year, it has not kept its promise to allow international inspections of its dismantling of the Punggye-ri site in May, criticizing the fact that this measure could be canceled.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that he had invited the North Korean Foreign Minister to meet in New York next week and that other officials from Pyongyang would travel to Vienna for a meeting. talk to nuclear envoy Stephen Biegun.

Asked Thursday whether the meetings would take place, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the invitations had been sent out and added, "We are certainly ready to meet if they can."

Nauert said Washington looked forward to an official reading of the North-South talks at meetings with South Koreans next week, which will include a Monday-Monday meeting on the sidelines of the US General Assembly.

Asked about Pompeo's statement Wednesday, welcoming plans to dismantle all Yongbyon facilities in the presence of US inspectors and the IAEA, Nauert said Moon and Kim had spoken of inspectors.

"Making sure that IAEA inspectors and US inspectors are part of everything is really a common understanding," she said.

"Whenever you have a nuclear situation like this where there is a dismantling, we expect the IAEA to be part of it, so that would be the normal course of business. We have this shared understanding with countries.

When asked why this detail was not in the document signed by Moon and Kim, Nauert replied, "We have had conversations with the North Korean government and that is our mutual understanding; it is also the understanding between South Korea and North Korea. It was one of the things discussed, according to my understanding, over the past few days.

Nauert did not respond when asked whether the United States was willing to take "corresponding measures" except to say, "Nothing can happen in the absence of denuclearization; denuclearization must come first. "

The North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Song, did not answer the question put on Thursday by the journalists if his Foreign Minister was to meet Pompeo on the sidelines of the American General Assembly next week.

END OF WAR

Kim is committed to working on the "complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" in two meetings with Moon and his meeting with Trump, but the follow-up negotiations on the implementation of vague commitments have since failed.

Washington calls for concrete actions, such as full disclosure of North Korea's nuclear facilities and missiles, before meeting Pyongyang's key demands, including the official end of the war and easing international sanctions.

The war ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, which means that United Nations forces led by the United States, including South Korea, are technically still at war with the North. .

But South Korea and the United States feared that the end of the war would prompt China and Russia, even North Korea, to demand the dissolution of the United Nations Command (UNC), which cuts into US forces in Korea. from South. and share.

Seoul plans to jointly announce with the United States the end of the war by this year, a move which Moon said he would discuss with Trump during their meeting next week at the General Assembly. United Nations in New York.

A declaration of end of war would not affect the presence of US troops and the UNC in the south, said Moon, adding that Kim shared his point of view.

"It would be a political declaration that would mark a starting point for peace negotiations," Moon said.

"A peace treaty would be sealed, as well as the normalization of North Korea and the United States. relations between the North and complete denuclearization. "