Thread: Pompeo and Bolton outline North Korea plans as talks approach

Pompeo and Bolton outline North Korea plans as talks approach

By Maegan Vazquez, CNN
Updated 11:45 AM ET, Sun May 13, 2018

Washington (CNN)Senior Trump administration officials are outlining new details of their plans to work toward the denuclearization North Korea as President Donald Trump prepares for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un next month.

White House national security adviser John Bolton said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that North Korea's prospects are "unbelievably strong if they'll commit to denuclearization."

"I think what the prospect for North Korea is to become a normal nation, to behave and interact with the rest of the world the way that South Korea does," Bolton said.

Bolton said the United States is pursuing a standard of "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization" heading into negotiations.

"On the denuclearization side of the program, that means all aspects of their nuclear program," he added. "Clearly, the ballistic missiles program, as with Iran, with the intention of being a delivery system for nuclear weapons -- that's gotta go. I think we need to look at their chemical and biological weapons programs as well. The President's going to raise other issues, the Japanese abductees, South Korean citizens who were kidnapped."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on "Fox News Sunday," "Our eyes are wide open with respect to the risks, but it is our fervent hope that Chairman Kim wants to make a strategic change."

Pompeo also offered more details on what a path to prosperity for North Korea would look like with direct investment by the US if Kim agrees to Washington's demands.

"This will be Americans coming in -- private sector Americans, not the US taxpayer -- private sector Americans coming in to help build out the energy grid," he said. "They need enormous amounts of electricity in North Korea."

Pompeo said the US would "work with them to develop infrastructure, all the things that the North Korean people need, the capacity for American agriculture to support North Korea so they can eat meat and have healthy lives. Those are the kind of things that if we get what it is the President has demanded -- complete verifiable irreversible denuclearization of North Korea -- that the American people will offer in spades."

Pompeo added that the US "will have to provide security assurances" to Kim as well.

The comments from Bolton and Pompeo come as Trump prepares to meet with Kim in June. According to Bolton, Trump has been extensively preparing by speaking with advisers, "different people, foreign leaders, (and) he had an extensive conversation with (President) Xi Jinping of China earlier this week."

"I've been on the job about five weeks," Bolton said. "I would say that Iran and North Korea probably (have) taken up over half of my time, and a lot of that obviously is -- is helping him make the decisions and get ready for these meetings."

Pompeo said Trump is in a unique position.

"No president has ever put America in a position where the North Korean leadership thought that this was truly possible, that the Americans would actually do this, would lead to the place where America was no longer held at risk by the North Korean regime," he said, adding, "That's the objective."

Pompeo added that Kim follows the Western press and "he's paying attention things the world is saying. He too is preparing for June 12th."

"He'll probably watch this show at some point," the secretary told "Fox News Sunday."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/13/polit...ntv/index.html

This is looking good. What a wonderful thing it will be to have a real full-fledged peace treaty with North Korea after all these years. I hope everything goes well and no one messes it up.

N. Korea will never fully give up nuclear weapons: top defector

AFP•May 14, 2018

Seoul (AFP) - North Korea will never completely give up its nuclear weapons, a top defector said ahead of leader Kim Jong Un's landmark summit with US President Donald Trump next month.

The current whirlwind of diplomacy and negotiations will not end with "a sincere and complete disarmament" but with "a reduced North Korean nuclear threat", said Thae Yong-ho, who fled his post as the North's deputy ambassador to Britain in August 2016.

"In the end, North Korea will remain 'a nuclear power packaged as a non-nuclear state'," Thae told the South's Newsis news agency.

His remarks come ahead of an unprecedented summit between Kim and Trump in Singapore on June 12 where North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes are expected to dominate the agenda.

North and South Korea affirmed their commitment to the goal of denuclearisation of the peninsula at summit last month, and Pyongyang announced at the weekend it will destroy its only known nuclear test site next week.

But it has not made public what concessions it is offering.

Washington is seeking the "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation (CVID)" of the North and stresses that verification will be key.

Pyongyang has said it does not need nuclear weapons if the security of its regime is guaranteed.

But Thae, one of the highest ranking officials to have defected in recent years, said: "North Korea will argue that the process of nuclear disarmament will lead to the collapse of North Korea and oppose CVID."

The North wanted to ensure Kim's "absolute power" and its model of hereditary succession, he added, and would oppose intrusive inspections as they "would be viewed as a process of breaking down Kim Jong Un's absolute power in front of the eyes of ordinary North Koreans and elites".

At a party meeting last month when Kim proclaimed the development of the North's nuclear force complete and promised no more nuclear or missile tests, he called its arsenal "a powerful treasured sword for defending peace".

"Giving it up soon after Kim Jong Un himself labelled it the 'treasured sword for defending peace' and a firm guarantee for the future? It can never happen," Thae said.

- 'Peace gestures' -

In his memoir that hit shelves Monday, Thae added: "More people should realise that North Korea is desperately clinging to its nuclear programme more than anything."

Tensions on and around the peninsula had been mounting for years as Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes saw it subjected to multiple rounds of increasingly strict sanctions by the UN Security Council, the US, EU, South Korea and others.

Trump last year threatened the North with "fire and fury".

But since the Winter Olympics in the South, Pyongyang and Washington have agreed to the unprecedented Singapore meeting.

Kim has also twice visited China after not paying his respects to President Xi Jinping in the six years since he inherited power from his father, and met the South's President Moon Jae-in in the Demilitarized Zone that divides their countries.

North Korea's sudden change in attitude was probably driven by the mounting international sanctions imposed over its weapons programmes that had begun to take a toll on the livelihoods of ordinary citizens, Thae said.

As of last year the UN Security Council sanctions included measures on sectors such as coal, fish, textiles and overseas workers.

"North Korea did not foresee the destructive power of these sanctions," Thae told the interview. "These sanctions are threatening the livelihoods of millions of North Koreans at the root."

But Pyongyang had a long history of making overtures that ultimately came to nothing, he warned.

"North Korea's diplomacy has always been a repeat of hardline and appeasement," Thae said.

"It is North Korea's diplomatic tactic to push the situation to extreme confrontation and suddenly send peace gestures."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/n-korea-n...043937298.html

"Giving it up soon after Kim Jong Un himself labelled it the 'treasured sword for defending peace' and a firm guarantee for the future? It can never happen," Thae said.

We'll see. The US holds all the cards now, so things are somewhat different today than they were when you defected.

US-North Korea relations: Parallel negotiations

History suggests meeting with Trump may be nothing but a propaganda coup for Kim
about 7 hours ago

The rapprochement between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will rightly be welcomed, but there is plenty of history to suggest that the risk of failure in the coming talks is high.

The date and venue are set: Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will meet on June 12th in Singapore for the first summit between the leaders of the United States and North Korea. The moment will be all the more remarkable for the rapid turnaround in relations that have made it possible. Just six months ago, Kim was ridiculing the “deranged dotard” in the White House while provocatively firing long-range missiles over Japan. Trump responded to “rocketman” by threatening him with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”.

The rapprochement will rightly be welcomed, in particular on the Korean peninsula, where generations have lived with the threat of war, but also across Asia and further afield. If Trump can succeed in persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and put in train a process leading to long-term peace along the 38th parallel, it will be a landmark achievement.

But there is a long way to go, and plenty of history to suggest that the risk of failure is high. In 2000, the then president of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung, won the Nobel peace prize and sipped champagne with this Northern counterpart, Kim Jong-il, after talks that appeared to hold out the promise of peace. The initiative went nowhere. On that and several other occasions, Pyongyang has agreed to talks on its nuclear programme, taken the benefits (usually food, cash or a relaxing of sanctions) and then pulled the plug.

The meeting with Trump will be a propaganda coup for Kim, showing his people and the world the clout that going nuclear has given him. The talks will buy the regime time while allowing it to argue for an easing of sanctions and, ultimately, the removal of US troops from the peninsula. Meanwhile, nothing North Korea has said suggests it is ready to budge on its nuclear arsenal. At a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Pyongyang this week, North Korean foreign minister Kim Yong-chol made a point of reminding his visitor that “we have perfected our nuclear capability” – hardly the words of a man preparing to give up his strongest card.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/e...ions-1.3493621

But there is a long way to go, and plenty of history to suggest that the risk of failure is high. In 2000, the then president of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung, won the Nobel peace prize and sipped champagne with this Northern counterpart, Kim Jong-il, after talks that appeared to hold out the promise of peace. The initiative went nowhere. On that and several other occasions, Pyongyang has agreed to talks on its nuclear programme, taken the benefits (usually food, cash or a relaxing of sanctions) and then pulled the plug.

This is a very high stakes negotiation. The outcome will determine peace or war, because the United States will not allow North Korea to maintain nuclear weapons, weapons it has starved and tortured its people for decades to develop, for the purpose of attacking the United States.