[Mr. Pompeo’s tough stance on Thursday — two days after Mr. Trump met North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore for the first-ever summit meeting between leaders of their two countries — was intended to reassure America’s allies Japan and South Korea, and to deny reports in North Korea’s state media that the United States had agreed to ease the sanctions. They were also a clear appeal for cooperation from Beijing.]
By
Jane Perlez and Choe Sang-Hun
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said the president’s
recent comments about North Korea no longer being a
nuclear threat were
made with “eyes wide open.” Published On June 14,
2018 Credit Image by
Pool photo by Kim Hong-Ji
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BEIJING
— Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo told Asian powers on Thursday that President Trump was sticking to
demands that North Korea surrender its nuclear weapons, as he sought to hold
together a fragile consensus on maintaining tough sanctions against the North
despite Mr. Trump’s declaration that it was “no longer a nuclear threat.”
At a news conference in Seoul, South Korea,
Mr. Pompeo softened some of the president’s recent comments — but did not
retract them — and insisted that United Nations sanctions would remain in place
until North Korea had accomplished “complete denuclearization.”
“We are going to get the complete
denuclearization,” Mr. Pompeo told reporters. “Only then will there be relief
from sanctions.”
He made the same point later Thursday in
Beijing, where he met with China’s president, Xi Jinping. But China had already
shown signs of breaking ranks on tough enforcement of the sanctions against its
neighbor and trading partner, saying that with North Korea now at the
negotiating table, they could legitimately be eased.
China did not appear to have budged from that
position on Thursday. At a news conference alongside China’s foreign minister,
Wang Yi, Mr. Pompeo conceded that the United Nations sanctions had “mechanisms
for relief” and said that “we have agreed at the appropriate time they will be
considered.” But he insisted that time would be after “full denuclearization.”
Mr. Wang, who said China was intent on
playing “a constructive role” in connection with the North, declined to answer
a question about China’s intentions on the sanctions.
Mr. Pompeo’s tough stance on Thursday — two
days after Mr. Trump met North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore for
the first-ever summit meeting between leaders of their two countries — was
intended to reassure America’s allies Japan and South Korea, and to deny
reports in North Korea’s state media that the United States had agreed to ease
the sanctions. They were also a clear appeal for cooperation from Beijing.
In a joint statement signed in Singapore, Mr.
Kim committed to the vague promise of “complete denuclearization” and Mr. Trump
promised equally vague security assurances. The document was glaringly light on
details, including when and how North Korea would dismantle its nuclear program
and what it would do with its missiles.
North Korean state media on Wednesday
reported that Mr. Trump had agreed to lift sanctions when relations improved
and that he had endorsed a “step-by-step” denuclearization process, rather than
immediate and total dismantlement. Adding to global confusion were comments by
Mr. Trump that the world can “sleep well tonight” because “there is no longer a
nuclear threat from North Korea.”
Mr. Pompeo said in Seoul, where he conferred
with the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan, that those remarks were
made with “eyes wide open.”
Mr. Trump also stunned American allies in the
region when he announced Tuesday that he would end joint military exercises
with South Korea, calling the war games the allies have conducted for decades
“very expensive” and “provocative.” Even Pentagon officials were caught off
guard by Mr. Trump’s announcement.
In a further display of disjointed American
messaging on North Korea, Mr. Trump’s assurances that Mr. Kim desires peace
were undercut by a North Korean computer hacking alert from the Department of
Homeland Security.
Barely 48 hours after the summit meeting, the
department issued a report on Thursday warning of “North Korean government
malicious cyberactivity” caused by an invasive software known as Hidden Cobra.
In Seoul, Mr. Pompeo sought to allay fears in
South Korea and Japan that Mr. Trump had given away too much. He insisted the
Trump administration’s approach was superior to those of previous
administrations
“The sequence will be different this time,”
he said, adding that Mr. Trump had made it clear to Mr. Kim that sanctions
relief would come only after denuclearization.
Mr. Pompeo said the United States and its
allies remained committed to achieving a “complete, verifiable and irreversible
denuclearization of North Korea,” but he said more negotiations to get there
would be necessary. It will be “a process,” he said, adding, “not an easy one.”
The government of South Korea, which has been
an eager supporter of Mr. Trump’s diplomacy with Mr. Kim, spared no praise on
Thursday.
“This is the first time that the highest
authority of North Korea promised to the president of the United States to work
toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which we believe
has bolstered the political momentum for action to resolve the North Korean
nuclear issue,” said Kang Kyung-wha, South Korea’s foreign minister.
On Thursday, President Moon Jae-in of South
Korea indicated that his government supported Mr. Trump’s decision to end joint
military exercises. Speaking at a meeting of his National Security Council, Mr.
Moon said South Korea needed to be “flexible” about the exercises if North
Korea started moving toward denuclearization.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attached
a similar significance to the summit talks’ result.
“I think it is significant that regarding the
nuclear issue first, Chairman Kim promised to President Trump the complete
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Mr. Abe said. “I think that the U.S.-North
Korea summit meeting was a step forward toward peace and stability in Northeast
Asia.”
But Japan’s foreign minister, Taro Kono,
struck a less enthusiastic chord, stressing that stability in the region could
only be achieved when North Korea verifiably dismantled “all weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles of all ranges.”
Mr. Kono also suggested that a “pause” in
joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea should be
“contingent upon” North Korean action toward denuclearization.
Despite the confusion and wariness in the
region, there was one clear winner from the political thaw on the Korean
Peninsula: Mr. Moon of South Korea, who worked tirelessly to help make the
Kim-Trump meeting happen.
On Thursday, election results showed that the
Democratic Party of Mr. Moon had ridden a wave of popular support for his peace
initiative to win 14 of 17 elections for mayors and governors of big cities and
provinces, including Seoul, routing the conservative opposition party Liberty
Korea.
The elections took place on Wednesday, one
day after the talks between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump. Despite widespread
skepticism, many South Koreans celebrated the meeting after months of living in
the shadow of a possible war.
“Some analysts give a low score to the North
Korea-United States summit, but that is far from how the people think of it,”
Mr. Moon told Mr. Pompeo on Thursday.
In Beijing, an initial sense that the summit
meeting had been a boon to China quickly disappeared.
“There are big uncertainties,” said Yang
Xiyu, a former Foreign Ministry official who directed China’s relations with
North Korea in the mid-2000s. “The big differences are on the step-by-step
approach for denuclearization that North Korea wants. I am worried the U.S.
will say they want everything done at once and then there is collapse.”
The absence of any mention of a longstanding
American demand that North Korea must agree to verification of its nuclear
dismantlement presented a major stumbling block to progress, he said.
“North Korea is nervous about verification
and the U.S. wants verification,” he said.
Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that his trade
dispute with China might have resulted in weaker Chinese enforcement of
sanctions against North Korea, but he refrained from strenuously objecting.
Mr. Xi “really closed up that border. Maybe a
little less the last couple of months. That’s O.K.,” he said.
“We’re having very tough talks on trade,” he
added. “And I think that probably affects China somewhat. And I think, over the
last two months, the border is more open than it was when we first started.”
Jane Perlez reported from Beijing, and Choe
Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea. Motoko Rich contributed reporting from Tokyo,
and Rick Gladstone from New York.
