N Korea

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Re: N Korea

Post by Gaybutton »

We really don't know the details yet or what agreements might be reached, but if it all works out well I think I would be in favor of it:
_____________________________________________________________________

Pompeo: U.S. willing to help North Korea economy if it gives up nuclear weapons

May 11, 2018

WASHINGTON -- The United States aspires to have North Korea as a "close partner" and not an enemy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday, noting that the U.S. has often in history become good friends with former adversaries. Pompeo said he had told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un of that hope during his brief visit to Pyongyang earlier this week, where he also he finalized details of the upcoming summit between Kim and U.S. President Trump and secured the release of three Americans imprisoned in the country.

Pompeo also said his talks with Kim on Wednesday were "warm," ''constructive," and "good" -- and that he made clear that if North Korea gets rid of its nuclear weapons in a permanent and verifiable way, the U.S. is willing to help the impoverished nation boost its economy and living stands to levels like those in prosperous South Korea.

"We had good conversations about the histories of our two nations, the challenges that we have had between us," Pompeo told reporters at a news conference with South Korea's visiting foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha Friday. "We talked about the fact that America has often in history had adversaries who we are now close partners with and our hope that we could achieve the same with respect to North Korea."

He did not mention other adversaries by name, but Pompeo and others have often noted that the U.S. played a major role in rebuilding Japan and the European axis powers in the wake of the Second World War. With U.S. help, those countries recovered from the devastation of conflict.

"If North Korea takes bold action to quickly denuclearize, the United States is prepared to work with North Korea to achieve prosperity on the par with our South Korean friends," he said.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump said he will be meeting with Kim on June 12, tweeting "we will both try to make it a very special moment for world peace!" The tweet came hours after Mr. Trump led a dramatic overnight welcome ceremony for the three Americans released by North Korea -- Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak Song, and Tony Kim. After greeting them privately on board a government plane, the president and first lady escorted them in front of cameras.

"One of them walked up to me, shook my hand. I said, 'Welcome home.' He said, 'God bless America,'" said State Department official Brian Hook, who was with Pompeo in North Korea.

Administration officials consider the release an encouraging signal ahead of next month's summit.

"Kim Jong Un has said publicly and in discussions is that he is prepared, he is prepared to negotiate to achieve complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," Vice President Mike Pence told "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan on "CBS This Morning." "Those words are important, but we'll see what they mean."

Kang praised the upcoming meeting between Mr. Trump and Kim in Singapore as an "historic" opportunity, but added a few notes of skepticism as well. Amid concerns that North Korea will demand the U.S. withdraw its troops from neighboring South Korea, Kang emphasized that the U.S. military presence there must be "a matter for the U.S.-ROK alliance first and foremost," using an acronym for South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea.

She said the U.S. troop presence in the South for the past 65 years has played a "crucial role for deterrence," peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. Therefore, she said, any change in the size of the U.S. forces in the South Korea should not be on the table at the summit.

"The next few weeks will be critical, requiring air-tight coordination between our two countries," Kang said, noting that South Korean President Moon Jae-in would be in Washington to see Mr. Trump later this month.

Since Mr. Trump announced plans to hold a summit with Kim questions have been raised continually about whether the two leaders have the same objective in mind when they speak about "denuclearization." To the U.S., that means the North giving up the nuclear weapons it has already built. But North Korea has said it's willing to talk now because it's already succeeded in becoming a nuclear-armed state, fueling skepticism that the North would truly being willing to give those weapons up.

Pompeo said there would need to be "complete" and "verifiable" denuclearization that would remove North Korea as a threat to the South, the United States and the rest of the world. He said a massive inspection and monitoring regime would be required to ensure the North's compliance.

"I think there is complete agreement about what the ultimate objectives are," Pompeo said, though he declined to offer more detail.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pompeo-u-s ... r-weapons/
fountainhall

Re: N Korea

Post by fountainhall »

So Trump is perfectly happy cosying up to a murdering dictator from a family of murdering dictators and helping to build his economy whilst at the same time he unilaterally tears up an internationally negotiated multi-national agreement with Iran which, in the words of Pompeo and others, has met all of those treaty obligations! Of course Obama signed the Iran deal and so Trump gets zero credit for that! What a complete joker!
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Re: N Korea

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fountainhall wrote:So Trump is perfectly happy cosying up to a murdering dictator
I wouldn't say he is "cosying up" to Kim at all. Surely if Kim has decided it is time to talk then that opportunity MUST be taken. Of course the chances are that Kim will go back on anything that they agree on, but what if....just what if...something comes from the talks?
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Re: N Korea

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fountainhall wrote:So Trump is perfectly happy cosying up to a murdering dictator from a family of murdering dictators
I am not among those who take a position that no matter what Trump does, it is automatically wrong. I disagree with nearly everything else Trump is and what Trump stands for, but not this time. At least not yet. I'll reserve my judgment until we know how the results of these talks will play out.

What do you suggest Trump should do, refuse the talks and refuse to meet with Kim?

As for murdering dictators, would you suggest that the USA sever diplomatic relations and refuse to have anything further to do with Russia?
fountainhall

Re: N Korea

Post by fountainhall »

The point of my post was less a condemnation of the Kim Dynasty and more of a comparison between (a) Trimp’s complete about turn in his rhetoric re North Korea when he has actually achieved far less than the leader of South Korea and (b) his folly in tearing up the Iran Agreenent. Kim is a man whom he vilified last year and yet now he is almost on best friend status.
[Trump’s] praise for the North Korean leader is a dramatic shift for the U.S., which has long condemned the Kim family dynasty for brutality and deceit. Trump himself last year derided Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and said it is “hard to believe his people, and the military, put up with living in such horrible conditions.”

"We’re having very good discussions,” Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday during a meeting with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron. “Kim Jong Un -- he really has been very open and I think very honorable from everything we’re seeing.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... n-dealings

Kim with his record “an honorable dictator”?
Captain Kirk wrote:Surely if Kim has decided it is time to talk then that opportunity MUST be taken
Agreed. But is it not odd that this is precisely what his father wanted and Bush 43 resolutely refused, insisting instead on 6 party talks which went nowhere?

I believe Trump and Kim may well come to some agreement with a resultant major easing of international tensions. But for Pompeo to suggest that the USA will assist the North to become as economically successful as the South if it gives up its nukes is a more than ridiculous comment when Iran, which has halted its nuclear programme, is going to be hit with further stifling sanctions.

According to the relevant inspection bodies, Iran has fulfilled its every obligation under the multi-national deal. Yet because Trump and the right-wingers hate the fact that Obama negotiated and signed it and, in their opinion - i.e. in Netanyahu’s opinion - it does not go far enough, rather than take the Macron route to keep the basis of the deal and negotiate further restrictions, he happily kicks three key allies France, Britain and Germany in the balls. Further he says he will slap sanctions on them if they continue business with Iran.

If he does succeed in a better long-term deal with Iran, he’s the hero. He succeeds in bringing Iran to heel, overturning the humiliation of the US Embassy siege and goes pretty far along the line towards regime change. If he fails, like Bush 43 he’ll be responsible for what could be a very long and nasty conflagration in that part of the world.
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Re: N Korea

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fountainhall wrote:now he is almost on best friend status.
I don't see it that way, but to me that doesn't matter. What matters is whether the talks will work. In my opinion, if there is only 1 chance in 1000 that the talks can work, I'd rather take that chance than do nothing and just let the war of words escalate until it becomes something none of us wants to happen.

I don't see how Bush's refusal of face-to-face talks has any relevance to what is going on now.
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Re: N Korea

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Going wrong before it even starts?
_____________________________

North Korea expands threat to cancel Trump-Kim summit, saying it won’t be pushed to abandon its nukes

by Anna Fifield

May 16, 2018

SEOUL — North Korea is rapidly moving the goal posts for next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting it “unilaterally” abandon its nuclear program and stop talking about a Libya-style solution to the standoff.

The latest warning, delivered by former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Gye Gwan on Wednesday, fits Pyongyang’s well-established pattern of raising the stakes in negotiations by threatening to walk out if it doesn’t get its way.

This comes just hours after the North Korean regime cast doubt on the planned summit by protesting joint air force drills taking place in South Korea, saying they were ruining the diplomatic mood.

If the Trump administration approaches the summit “with sincerity” for improved relations, “it will receive a deserved response from us,” Kim Gye Gwan, now vice foreign minister, said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday.

“However, if the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit,” he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name. He also questioned the sequencing of denuclearization first, compensation second.

Analysts said they were not surprised by these latest developments in what has been a year of diplomatic whiplash.

“The U.S. and South Korea hold an exercise, which contains some strategic strike elements to it. U.S. officials can’t seem to get on the same page regarding denuclearization and what is required of North Korea,” said Ken Gause, a North Korea leadership expert at CNA, a Virginia-based consulting firm. “At some point, North Korea was going to cry foul.”

Trump and Kim Jong Un are due to meet in Singapore on June 12, which would be the first time a North Korean leader had met with a sitting U.S. president.

Trump and his top aides, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, have repeatedly said that the United States wants the “complete verifiable irreversible denuclearization of North Korea” — a high standard that Pyongyang has previously balked at.

Bolton, known for his sharply hawkish views, has said that North Korea must commit to a disarmament similar to “Libya 2004.” He was undersecretary of state for arms control in 2004, when Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi agreed to give up its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

But this is not a tempting model for North Korea. Seven years after surrendering his nuclear program, Gaddafi was overthrown, then brutally killed by opponents of his regime.

North Korea lashed out at Bolton, whom the regime derided as “human scum” while he worked in the George W. Bush administration, and at the suggestions that North Korea should be dealt with in the same way that the Bush administration dealt with Libya and Iraq.

“This is not an expression of intention to address the issue through dialogue. It is essentially a manifestation of awfully sinister move[s] to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq, which had been collapsed due to the yielding of their countries to big powers,” Kim Gye Gwan said.

The “world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met a miserable fate,” he said, harking back to North Korea’s previous criticism of Bolton. “We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide a feeling of repugnance towards him,” the vice minister said.

In negotiations over the years, North Korea has repeatedly threatened to walk out over disagreements — and has on occasion actually walked out. In that respect, Wednesday’s announcement is not surprising and underscores analysts’ warnings that North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons easily.

During the April 27 inter-Korean summit, Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” phrasing that was seen as code for mutual arms reduction.

Earlier Wednesday, KCNA had protested the joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises taking place in the southern half of the peninsula, threatening to pull out of the summit over this “provocation.”

North Korea said barely a word about the drills during the computer simulation exercises that took place through April, and the South Korean and U.S. militaries had scaled back and played down the exercises to avoid antagonizing the North.

But the two-week-long Max Thunder drills between the two countries’ air forces, an annual event that began Friday and involve about 100 warplanes, including B-52 bombers and F-15K jets, have clearly struck a nerve.

“The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities,” the KCNA report said.

Max Thunder has been held annually in the spring for about 10 years. It features the United States and South Korea flying strike aircraft together from air bases in South Korea and Japan to practice air-to-air combat. About 1,000 U.S. troops and 500 South Koreans were involved last year, according to a U.S. military statement published at the time.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said that the Max Thunder drills would carry on as planned and that there is no disagreement on this between South Korea and the United States.

“The Max Thunder drill is training for pilot skill enhancement, not an attack drill or implementation of an operation plan,” Defense Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Robert Manning III, said Tuesday that the exercises are part of the U.S.-South Korean alliance’s “routine, annual training program to maintain a foundation of military readiness.”

Manning said the purpose of the exercises is to enhance the alliance’s ability to defend South Korea. “While we will not discuss specifics, the defensive nature of these combined exercises has been clear for many decades and has not changed,” he said.

North Korea, as it has in the past, disagreed. “This exercise targeting us, which is being carried out across South Korea, is a flagrant challenge to the Panmunjom Declaration and an intentional military provocation running counter to the positive political development on the Korean Peninsula,” KCNA said.

By mentioning the Panmunjom Declaration, North Korea was referring to the agreement signed last month by Kim and Moon following their historic summit.

They agreed to work to turn the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty that would officially bring the war to a close, and also to pursue the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.

Trump administration officials said they were continuing to work toward the June 12 summit between Trump and Kim.

“The United States will look at what North Korea has said independently and continue to coordinate closely with our allies,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States had not received notice of any change or cancellation. She said the government is continuing to plan for the summit and is confident that Kim understands the need for the exercises.

At the same time as threatening to scuttle the summit with Trump, North Korea canceled talks with South Korean officials that had been scheduled for Wednesday, less than 24 hours after agreeing to them.

North Korea had said it would send five senior officials to the border village of Panmunjom for meetings with South Korean officials, the first such talks since the April 27 inter-Korean summit.

They were due to discuss some of the infrastructure aid that South Korea would provide to North Korea as part of their broader detente. The North was going to send Ri Son Kwon, who leads the North Korean agency in charge of inter-Korean exchanges and was present at the summit, while the South was going to send senior officials from the Transport Ministry and forest service.

North Korea’s decision to unilaterally postpone high-level talks between the two Koreas “is not in line with the spirit of the Panmunjom Declaration and is regrettable,” unification ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun told reporters on Wednesday.

“Such action of the North is inconsistent with the fundamental spirit and purpose of the Panmunjom Declaration agreed by the South and North leaders on April 27,” Baik said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/no ... story.html
firecat69

Re: N Korea

Post by firecat69 »

Trump is a Moron thinking it would be so simple. He continues to fail in the Middle East and he will continue to fail in N Korea. His good friend Xi stuck it up his Ass by pumping oil to NKorea while suckering him in to stating he will help their crooked Telecom Company.
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Re: N Korea

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firecat69 wrote:Trump is a Moron thinking it would be so simple.
I hope the talks will happen and I hope for a good outcome, but right now my worry is if there is a way to screw up the whole thing and end up making the situation even worse than it was, Trump and/or his cronies will find it.
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Re: N Korea

Post by Captain Kirk »

Any meeting and/or agreements between the US and NK was always going to be a long shot. If the meetings are conditional on NK being denuclearized then it simply won't happen. That genie is now out of the bottle. If you were Kim would you give up your weapons? Not a hope in hell, not if you had any sense. It's a bit rich for western governments to stick pins in a map to decide who gets nukes and who doesn't while at the same time sitting pretty with their own stockpile. Kim might be - or almost certainly is - a complete nutball, but in his position he's absolutely right to want be well armed.
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