HANOI — Two days of soaring rhetoric and over-the-top flattery between President Trump and Kim Jong Un could not bridge the gap on an issue that has plagued U.S. negotiators for months: the lifting of crippling economic sanctions on the impoverished rogue state.
Trump said Thursday that North Korea’s demand for full sanctions relief in exchange for partial denuclearization was the main impediment to reaching an agreement on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic programs, a centerpiece of the president’s foreign policy..
“Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that,” Trump told reporters at a news conference in Vietnam that capped a two-day summit. “You always have to be prepared to walk.”
The abrupt conclusion of the talks on Thursday without a future meeting date or a plan to move forward exposed the vulnerabilities of relying on the personal rapport of Trump and Kim to overcome disputes that faceless negotiators had been stuck on for eight months following the two leaders’ first summit in Singapore.
“Good personal rapport is good, but it’s not enough to bridge big gaps in the course of one high-level summit,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
The collapse of talks aimed at resolving the most pressing security threat in Asia is a disappointment for the president, who began his summit with Kim on Wednesday saying he hoped it would be “equal or greater than the first.”
President Donald boards Air Force One after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Feb. 28, 2019. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
It also raises doubts about whether the two sides can regain momentum in a high-stakes negotiation that has yet to achieve results from lower-level diplomats working behind the scenes. In the absence of progress on the diplomatic front, experts worry that tensions could rise on the military front.
“How are Stephen Biegun and Kim Hyok Chol going to close a gap that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un couldn’t?” said John Delury, a Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, referring to the lead U.S. and North Korean negotiators.
In the past several months, lower-level talks have been slow to make progress, as junior North Korean diplomats have lacked the negotiating authority to make concessions, said diplomats familiar with the talks.
As talks broke down on Thursday, U.S. officials canceled a planned lunch meeting between Trump and Kim and notified reporters that there would be no joint statement describing what was agreed upon.“They weren’t close enough to keep talking about it over lunch. How are both negotiating teams going to figure that out?” Delury added.
During the news conference, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to sound a note of optimism, saying he hoped the negotiating teams “will get together in the days and weeks ahead and work out. It’s a very complex problem.”
President Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (Evan Vucci)
Beneath the president, the issue has divided his top advisers and America’s closest allies, who have tried to push the president in different directions.
National security adviser John Bolton is a staunch opponent of the talks who is skeptical of Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea appointed by Trump to negotiate an agreement.
Bolton and like-minded officials at the Treasury Department and Pentagon had expressed concern that Biegun was moving too fast in looking to loosen sanctions or agreeing to an end-of-war declaration, according to a people familiar with the discussions. Defenders of Biegun said he is a pragmatist and seasoned negotiator who remains clear-eyed about his challenge and privately acknowledges the steep odds of a successful outcome.
Outside the United States, Japanese officials have long preferred a more hawkish posture toward the North Koreans and are expected to be relieved that Trump did not trade sanctions relief for the shutdown of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility, an expansive compound that houses the country’s uranium-enrichment facilities but does not encompass the entirety of the North’s warheads and missile inventory. On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe backed Trump’s decision and said he “did not compromise easily.”
But America’s other key Asian ally, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, has invested a huge amount of his personal prestige in engagement with North Korea. He is certain to be enormously disappointed in the breakdown of the talks.
Presidential spokesman Kim Eui-keum called it “regrettable” that Trump and Kim Jong Un were not able to reach “complete agreement” at the talks, and he expressed hope that the two sides would continue to talk. But a South Korean presidential adviser offered a franker assessment of Thursday’s events.
“I was flustered,” said Kim Kwang-gil, a sanctions expert on the Presidential Committee on Northern Economic Cooperation. “So many people in South Korea who took hopes in this summit, especially those anticipating the Kaesong economic complex to resume, are left heart-broken.”
Moon had talked grandly of establishing road and rail links with North Korea as a first step toward the sort of economic integration that Europe established after World War II. He has also been keen to restart a joint economic zone in Kaesong in North Korea that was closed in 2016 during North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing, as well as a joint tourism project at Mount Kumgang.
The breakdown in talks sent shivers through financial markets in Asia, with South Korea’s stock market falling sharply just before the close of trading to end down 1.8 percent. The South Korean won also slipped, and Japan’s main Nikkei 225 share index ended down 0.8 percent.
Although many experts referred to the collapse of the talks as a failure, some said the summit could beget more progress in the days to come.
“I think the failure was an admission of a need for more time and working-level talks to achieve an agreement,” said Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It lets the North Koreans know that summitry has to be accompanied by process and that an end-run around working-level talks and exclusive focus on the leader-level won’t necessarily yield results.”
This story was originally published by Washington Post
via USAHint.com
No comments:
Post a Comment