BEIJING: The United States and its Asian allies worked Thursday to paper over any semblance of disagreement over President Donald Trump’s concession to Kim Jong Un that the US will halt military exercises with South Korea, with Trump’s top diplomat insisting the president hadn’t backed down from his firm line on North Korea’s nukes.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, meeting in Seoul with top South Korean and Japanese diplomats, put a more sober spin on several moves by Trump after his summit with Kim in Singapore fueled unease in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul. He said Trump’s curious claim that the North’s nuclear threat was over was issued with “eyes wide open,” and brushed off a North Korean state media report suggesting Trump would grant concessions even before the North fully rids itself of nuclear weapons.
“We’re going to get denuclearization,” Pompeo said in the South Korean capital. “Only then will there be relief from the sanctions.”
Pompeo flew from Seoul to China’s capital, Beijing, later Thursday for a meeting with President Xi Jinping, whose country is believed to wield considerable influence with North Korea as its chief ally and economic lifeline.
“I also want to thank China and President Xi for his role in helping bring North Korea to the negotiating table,” Pompeo said in a briefing with reporters.
Pompeo thanked Beijing for its continuing efforts to help achieve the “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.” He said both sides had agreed that sanctions would not be eased until that’s achieved.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in remarks at the start of his meeting with Pompeo, described the Singapore summit as of “great historic significance” that could lead to “enduring peace.” Wang said the US should continue to “work through China.”
Pompeo said there was still a risk that denuclearization might not be achieved and added there more work to be done by Beijing and Washington.
At a daily briefing, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang reiterated China’s support for a political settlement, while also pointing to an eventual lifting of United Nations Security Council 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 that the US believes helped coax Kim to the negotiating table.
On the joint US-South Korea drills that Trump — after meeting Kim — said would be terminated, Pompeo emphasized a key caveat: If the mercurial North Korean leader stops negotiating in good faith, the “war games” will be back on.
The words of reassurance from Pompeo came as diplomacy continued at an intense pace after Tuesday’s summit in Singapore, the first between a sitting American president and North Korea’s leader in six decades of hostility. 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.
Yet even as US and South Korean officials sought to parlay the momentum from the dramatic summit into more progress on the nuclear issue, there were persistent questions about whether Trump had given away too much in return for too little.
Trump’s announcement minutes after the summit’s conclusion that he would halt the “provocative” joint military drills were a shock to South Korea and caught much of the US military off guard, too. Pyongyang has long sought an end to the exercises it considers rehearsals for an invasion, but US treaty allies Japan and South Korea view them as critical elements of their own national security.
So Pompeo had some explaining to do as he traveled to Seoul to brief the allies on what transpired in Singapore.
In public, at least, South Korea’s leader cast the summit’s outcome as positive during a short meeting with Pompeo at the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential palace. President Moon Jae-in, an avowed supporter of engagement with North Korea, called it “a truly historic feat” that had “moved us from the era of hostility towards the era of dialogue, of peace and prosperity.”
Still, there were signs as Pompeo met later with the top Japanese and South Korean diplomats that concerns about the freeze had not been fully resolved. South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, speaking in Korean, told reporters afterward that the military drills issue “was not discussed in depth.”
“This is a matter that military officials from South Korea and the United States will have to discuss further and coordinate,” Kang said.
