BEIJING -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Asian powers Thursday that President Donald 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 Trump's declaration that it was "no longer a nuclear threat."
At a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, 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," 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 Thursday. At a news conference alongside China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, Pompeo conceded that the U.N. 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."
Wang, who said the U.S. should continue to "work through China" in connection with the North, declined to answer a question about China's intentions on the sanctions.
Pompeo said there was still a risk that denuclearization might not be achieved and there was more work to be done by Beijing and Washington.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang reiterated China's support for a political settlement, while also pointing to an eventual lifting of economic sanctions.
"We believe that the sanctions themselves are not the end," Geng said.
China has been praised by Trump for ramping up economic pressure on the North, which the U.S. believes helped coax Kim to the negotiating table.
Pompeo's tough stance Thursday -- two days after Trump met North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, in Singapore for the first-ever summit between leaders of their two countries -- was intended to reassure the United States' 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, Kim committed to the vague promise of denuclearization, and 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 outlets Wednesday reported that 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 Trump that the world can "sleep well tonight" because "there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."
Pompeo said in Seoul, where he huddled with the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan, that those remarks were made with "eyes wide open."
Trump also stunned U.S. 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."
Diverging from the president, Harry Harris, Trump's choice to become ambassador to South Korea, said the U.S. must continue to worry about the nuclear threat from North Korea.
However, Harris, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, endorsed Trump's plan to pause military exercises with the South, saying the U.S. is in a "dramatically different place" from where it was a year ago.
[NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA: Maps, data on country’s nuclear program]
VERIFICATION CALLED KEY
In Seoul, Pompeo sought to allay fears in South Korea and Japan that Trump had given away too much, with Trump coming under increasing criticism because the 1½-page statement that he and Kim signed spelled out no specific North Korean commitments besides working toward the "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," a promise the regime has repeatedly made and broken since the 1990s.
Pompeo insisted the Trump administration's approach was superior to those of previous administrations.
"The sequence will be different this time," he said, adding that Trump had made clear to Kim that sanctions relief would come only after denuclearization.
"The summit created this enormous historic opportunity for us to move forward and will fundamentally really shape the relationship between the United States and North Korea," Pompeo said. "Verification is essential to that. 'Complete denuclearization' certainly encompasses that idea very clearly."
It will be "a process," he said, adding, "not an easy one."
After first arriving in Seoul on Wednesday, Pompeo said he expected that North Korea would take major steps toward nuclear disarmament during Trump's first term. U.S. defense analysts have said Kim retains as many as 60 nuclear bombs and a range of missiles, including some he says can strike the U.S.
The government of South Korea, which has been an eager supporter of Trump's diplomacy with Kim, spared no praise 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.
In the village of Panmunjom along the North-South border, the rival Koreas on Thursday held their first high-level military talks since 2007, focused on reducing tensions across their heavily fortified border.
Also Thursday, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea indicated that his government supported Trump's decision to end joint military exercises. Speaking at a meeting of his National Security Council, 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," 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."
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.
Meanwhile, Abe was mulling his own summit with Kim in August or September, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, citing several unidentified government officials. Kono, Abe's foreign minister, said the government wasn't considering such a meeting at the moment and that high-level exchanges must resolve the issue of Japanese abductees held by North Korea.
S. KOREAN ELECTIONS
Despite the confusion and wariness in the region, there was one clear winner from the political thaw on the Korean Peninsula: 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 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 Wednesday, one day after the talks between Kim and 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," Moon told Pompeo on Thursday.
In Beijing, an initial sense that the summit 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."
For its part, Beijing has broadly welcomed Trump's diplomacy with Kim. The summit in Singapore marked a reduction in tensions -- a sea change from last fall, when North Korea was conducting nuclear and missile tests, and Trump and Kim were trading threats and insults that stoked fears of war.
Kim is now promising to work toward a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, and state media heralded the meeting as victorious, with photos of Kim standing side by side with Trump splashed across newspapers in Pyongyang. On Thursday, North Koreans finally got a glimpse of video of Trump and Kim together, as official Korean Central Television broadcast the first footage of Kim's trip to Singapore.
Information for this article was contributed by Jane Perlez and Choe Sang-Hun of The New York Times; by Josh Lederman, Christopher Bodeen, Kim Tong-hyung, Youkyung Lee, Gillian Wong, Matthew Pennington, Lolita C. Baldor and Ken Moritsugu of The Associated Press; and by Nick Wadhams, Jihye Lee, Jennifer Epstein, Kanga Kong, Andy Sharp, Kevin Hamlin and Terrence Dopp of Bloomberg News.
RELATED ARTICLE
http://www.arkansas…">Salute -- courtesy or gaffe?
A Section on 06/15/2018