[The remarks signaled Washington’s desire to not let the faltering dialogue process with North Korea blow completely off course, while making clear that the United States is not prepared to sacrifice military readiness for the sake of resuming talks.]
By Simon
Denyer
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U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers, F-35B stealth fighter jets and
South Korean
F-15K fighter jets fly over the Korean Peninsula during joint
drills on
Sept. 18, 2017. (South Korean Defense Ministry/AP)
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SEOUL — The United States will consider
changing plans to conduct joint military exercises with South Korea if that
helps support diplomatic efforts to restart a dialogue with North Korea,
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said Friday.
But Esper stopped short of canceling a
planned joint air drill, as North Korea has demanded.
Exercises are meant to ensure the readiness
of U.S. and South Korean forces “to deter and, if necessary, defeat our
adversaries,” Esper said, speaking alongside South Korean Defense Minister
Jeong Kyeong-doo after a meeting in Seoul.
“The purpose of our armed forces and our
exercises is not only to buttress our diplomacy, but to also enable and empower
it,” he said. “So we always have to remain flexible in terms of how we support
our diplomats to ensure that we do not close any doors that may allow forward
progress on the diplomatic front.”
The remarks signaled Washington’s desire to
not let the faltering dialogue process with North Korea blow completely off
course, while making clear that the United States is not prepared to sacrifice
military readiness for the sake of resuming talks.
Similar comments from Esper en route to South
Korea were greeted cautiously by North Korea, which countered with a demand for
a cancellation of the upcoming exercise.
“I would like to understand it as the U.S.
intention to drop out of the joint military drill or completely stop it,” Kim
Yong Chol, a senior North Korean official, said in a statement.
“I would like to believe that the remark of
the U.S. Secretary of Defense reflected the intention of President Trump, and
appreciate it as part of positive efforts of the U.S. side to preserve the
motive force of the DPRK-U.S. negotiations,” he said, referring to the
country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
He then delivered a sting in the tail, saying
that if the United States goes ahead with a “hostile provocation,” then
Pyongyang “will be compelled to answer with shocking punishment that would be
difficult for the U.S. to cope with.”
North Korea has given the United States until
the end of the year to come up with a new approach to denuclearization talks,
and it threatened this week to reverse an earlier decision to end nuclear and
intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
It says it feels “betrayed” because Trump did
not follow through on a promise to end joint exercises with South Korea in
return for a halt to Pyongyang’s long-range weapons tests.
The United States says North Korea has not
taken meaningful steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and has done
nothing to justify offering the sanctions relief the Kim Jong Un regime wants.
Talks between the two sides in Stockholm
broke down last month, and U.S. and Swedish efforts to revive the dialogue have
so far failed.
On Thursday, North Korea’s main negotiator,
Kim Myong Gil, expressed skepticism.
“If the negotiated solution of issues is
possible, we are ready to meet with the U.S. at any place and any time,” he
said in a statement.
“But I intuitively feel that the U.S. is not
ready to give a satisfactory answer to us and its proposal for dialogue with us
is a trick to earn time,” he said. “Explicitly speaking once again, I am not
interested in such a meeting.”
Min Joo Kim contributed to this report.
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