Speaking at the UN on Saturday, North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho warns that North Korea has taken significant goodwill measures toward disarmament in the past year, but does not see any corresponding moves by the US. That’s fueling mistrust.
That’s a problem, and Ri warns that there is no way North Korea is going to go through the entire disarmament process unilaterally without any trust in reciprocation. In particular, he warned there was concern about the US resistance to a phased process.
The US is not only resisting any efforts to offer any reciprocal goodwill efforts, and publicly saying they’ll do nothing until North Korea totally completes denuclearization. They are also pushing for increasing sanctions against North Korea, while other nations seek UN sanctions relief.
US officials argue that the sanctions are what got the process going in the first place, and more sanctions mean more progress. North Korean officials, however, are increasingly seeing this as not a give-and-take diplomatic effort, but just the US issuing increasing demands and giving nothing in return.
That’s how we roll. We demand everything up front and offer nothing in return. Other than more sanctions of course.
How responsible of NK to be up-front and public about their expectations and what they need for progress to happen. Now we just need to get the US govt to understand what diplomacy is and actually do it at least half as sincerely as NK.
I have absolutely no doubt that pompous and bolton will muck this up beyond belief!
A quote from article above: “more sanctions mean more progress.”
Unbelieveable in light of the progress made by the two koreas without the meddling by the great brains in dc.
US policy is changing, and Trump has allowed more time for the process.
. . .from Maximum Pressure Campaign to Bromance
>Sep 12, 2017 — State Dept — The strategy involves forging an all-encompassing international coalition to apply diplomatic, economic, and political pressure on North Korea to bring the regime to understand the only path to peace, prosperity and international acceptance is to cease its provocative actions and to abandon its destabilizing missile and nuclear programs. We have used different monikers for this strategy – “maximum pressure,” “peaceful pressure,” and “strategic accountability,” but the strategy’s components are the same. . .[sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions]
>Nov 21, 2017 — President Donald Trump ratcheted up his administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” this week by re-designating North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism and imposing new economic sanctions on four Chinese shipping companies and over a dozen North Korean entities and shipping vessels.
>Feb 19, 2018 — Tillerson pledged to keep up the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on North Korea.
>May 2, 2018 — “We remain gravely concerned and deeply troubled by these [human rights] abuses,” the department said. “In tandem with the maximum pressure campaign, we will continue to press for accountability for those responsible.”
>Jun 6, 2018 — The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that the “maximum pressure campaign” against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will continue although President Donald Trump said last week he had not liked the term.
>Sep 19, 2018 — The mood seems a world apart from the tensions of a year ago, when Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rattled sabers at each other amid missile tests, atomic explosions and the conspicuous deployments of aircraft carriers. Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” and mobilized an international campaign of “maximum pressure,” including stringent new sanctions. Now, that united front has already cracked.
>Sep 30, 2018 — Trump: “I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth,” Trump told an adoring crowd of thousands at Wesbanco Arena in Wheeling. “And then we fell in love, OK? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”