Is this legal? No farangs welcome...

[webfact]

South Korea to work with U.S. and North Korea after failed nuclear talks

By Joyce Lee and Hyonhee Shin

 

South Korean President Moon Jae-in delivers a speech during a ceremony celebrating the 100th anniversary of the March First Independence Movement against Japanese colonial rule, in central Seoul, South Korea, March 1, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

 

SEOUL/HANOI (Reuters) - South Korea will work with the United States and North Korea to ensure they reach agreement on denuclearisation, the South's president said on Friday, a day after talks between the U.S. and North Korean leaders collapsed over sanctions.

 

A second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in Vietnam, was cut short after they failed to reach a deal on the extent of sanctions relief North Korea would get in exchange for steps to dismantle its nuclear programme.

 

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in has been an active supporter of efforts to end confrontation on the Korean peninsula, meeting Kim three times last year and trying to facilitate his nuclear negotiations with the United States.

 

"My administration will closely communicate and cooperate with the United States and North Korea so as to help their talks reach a complete settlement by any means," Moon said in a speech in the South Korean capital, Seoul.

 

Moon also said South Korea would consult with the United States on ways to resume joint projects with the North including tourism development at Mount Kumgang and the Kaesong industrial complex, both in North Korea.

 

The Hanoi summit came eight months after Trump and Kim met for the first time in Singapore and agreed to establish new relations and peace in exchange for a North Korean commitment to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

 

Trump said two days of talks had made good progress but it was important not to rush into a bad deal. He said he had walked away because of unacceptable North Korean demands.

 

"It was all about the sanctions," Trump told a news conference after the talks were cut short. "Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn't do that."

 

'BIGGEST STEP'

However, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told a midnight news conference after Trump left Hanoi that North Korea had sought only a partial lifting of sanctions "related to people's livelihoods and unrelated to military sanctions".

 

He said North Korea had offered a realistic proposal involving the dismantling of all of its main nuclear site at Yongbyon, including plutonium and uranium facilities, by engineers from both countries.

 

"This is the biggest denuclearisation step we can take based on the current level of trust between the two countries," Ri said.

 

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui told the same briefing she had the impression that Kim "might lose his willingness to pursue a deal" after the U.S. side rejected a partial lifting of sanctions in return for destruction of Yongbyon, "something we had never offered before".

But despite raising that doubt, both sides indicated they wanted to maintain the momentum and press on.

 

North Korean media adopted a conciliatory tone.

 

The state KCNA news agency said Kim and Trump had a constructive and sincere exchange and decided to continue productive talks, without mentioning that the talks ended abruptly with no agreement.

 

Kim, who is due to leave Vietnam on Saturday, also expressed gratitude to Trump for travelling so far and actively putting in efforts to get results, KCNA added.

 

'OPPORTUNITY TO TALK'

A U.S. Sate Department official said the North Korean media report had been "quite constructive".

 

"(It) suggests to me that like us there’s still ample opportunity to talk," the official, who declined to be identified, told reporters.

 

North Korea had proposed closing part of its Yongbyon nuclear complex in exchange for the lifting of all U.N. sanctions except those directly targeting their weapons of mass destruction programmes, the official said.

 

The United Nations and the United States ratcheted up sanctions on North Korea when the reclusive state conducted repeated nuclear and ballistic missile tests in 2017, cutting off its main sources of hard cash.

 

"The dilemma that we were confronted with is the North Koreans at this point are unwilling to impose a complete freeze on their weapons of mass destruction programmes," the official told reporters.

 

"So to give many, many billions of dollars in sanctions relief would in effect put us in a position of subsidising the ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

 

Analysts estimate North Korea may have a nuclear arsenal of 20 to 60 weapons which, if fitted to intercontinental ballistic missiles it has developed, could threaten the U.S. mainland.

 

The collapse of the summit leaves Kim in possession of that arsenal though Trump said the North Korean leader had agreed to maintain his moratorium on nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

 

Trump spoke to the leaders of South Korea and Japan on his way back from Hanoi and told them the United States would work with them and talk to North Korea, the White House said.

 

Failure to reach an agreement marks a setback for Trump, a self-styled dealmaker under pressure at home over his ties to Russia and testimony from Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer who accused him of breaking the law while in office.

 

(Additional reporting by Eric Beech, Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON; Jeff Mason, Soyoung Kim, James Pearson, Josh Smith, Ju-min Park, Mai Nyugen, Khanh Vu in HANOI; Editing by Robert Birsel and Lincoln Feast)

 

 -- © Copyright Reuters 2019-03-01

 

 

[pegman]

Rocketman is not giving up his rockets under any circumstances. 

[Srikcir]

3 hours ago, webfact said:

South Korea would consult with the United States on ways to resume joint projects with the North including tourism development at Mount Kumgang and the Kaesong industrial complex, both in North Korea.

Not that South Korea has any choice.

It was ready to sign an armistice with North Korea but Trump wouldn't agree to such unilateral action without peninsula denuclearization.

It was discussing joint projects with North Korea but Trump wouldn't agree to such unilateral action without peninsula denuclearization.

Trump's leverage against North Korea in negotiations aside from pure US military power pressure (Fire & Fury) has been in part allegedly acting on behalf of Japan and South Korea as their ally. Separate deals between North Korea with South Korea and Japan diminishes US power projection and its own national interests in the region.

Furthermore, such separate agreements between sovereign states might mitigate Trump's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

[riclag]

"South Korea to work with U.S. and North Korea after failed nuclear talks"

Failure isn't a positive outlook, is it! Submission and appeasement by a country who's been led by a dictatorship rule for decades,wasn't in NK agenda today! Talk's continue, in the mean time no bombs and no missiles!

[spidermike007]

Looks like Trump walked away from a deal that could have been inked, had he possessed good negotiating skills. But since he can not negotiate his way out of a paper bag, nothing happened. Trump says they wanted full lifting of sanctions. N. Korea says they only asked for partial. And that even that was negotiable.  

 

Who should we believe? We should believe Kim. Why? Because Trump is a pathological liar, and ALWAYS puts his image and brand above the interests of the American people. Had he been a good negotiator, he would have walked away with some concessions, in exchange for marginal lifting of sanctions. I could have negotiated that deal! 

 

I think he may have been so distracted by the Cohen hearings, he was not able to apply the relatively small amount of intelligence and skills that he possesses. A minor arsenal at best.

[tlandtday]

14 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

Looks like Trump walked away from a deal that could have been inked, had he possessed good negotiating skills. But since he can not negotiate his way out of a paper bag, nothing happened. Trump says they wanted full lifting of sanctions. N. Korea says they only asked for partial. And that even that was negotiable.  

 

Who should we believe? We should believe Kim. Why? Because Trump is a pathological liar, and ALWAYS puts his image and brand above the interests of the American people. Had he been a good negotiator, he would have walked away with some concessions, in exchange for marginal lifting of sanctions. I could have negotiated that deal! 

 

I think he may have been so distracted by the Cohen hearings, he was not able to apply the relatively small amount of intelligence and skills that he possesses. A minor arsenal at best.

TDS in full mode lol.  So allowing North Korea to keep a small number of nuclear weapons is acceptable?

Personally I don't understand why Trump is wasting time with Kim.  He must think he can eventually get a deal.  At least wait and see what happens. Let it develop.

Edited March 1, 2019 by tlandtday

[spidermike007]

11 hours ago, tlandtday said:

TDS in full mode lol.  So allowing North Korea to keep a small number of nuclear weapons is acceptable?

Personally I don't understand why Trump is wasting time with Kim.  He must think he can eventually get a deal.  At least wait and see what happens. Let it develop.

 

Nobody is ever going to get North Korea to get rid of their entire program. Any reasonable mind will come to that conclusion. They have spent tens of billions on it, they depend on it for their survival, as far as they are concerned and it is not going to happen. Going into a negotiation expecting full denuclearization is naive at best. Trump should have accepted the concessions as a starting point, and offered minor sanctions relief in exchange. If he was able to negotiate, to even a modest degree, that could have happened. But, we all know how poor a negotiator he really is.