Different descriptions of meeting raised fears that disarmament negotiations may be doomed before they really begin
The peace process between the United States and North Korea appeared to be in crisis Sunday after Pyongyang angrily rejected Washington’s “gangster-like” demand for rapid nuclear disarmament, despite two days of intense talks.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Tokyo to brief his Japanese and South Korean counterparts on the talks, which he called positive, and declined to comment on Pyongyang’s statement rejecting his efforts and appealing to US President Donald Trump to revive the peace process.
In a tweet, Pompeo said he had held a “constructive meeting” with his Japanese counterpart and discussed “maintaining maximum pressure” on North Korea.
He is due to meet Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as well as South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha later Sunday.
Speaking privately, US officials suggested the harshly-worded North Korean statement was a negotiating tactic.
But after two days of theatrical amity in Pyongyang it appeared to mark a return to the North’s traditional hardline position.
The North’s foreign ministry took exception to Pompeo’s effort to secure concrete commitments to back leader Kim Jong-un’s promise, made at a summit last month with US President Donald Trump, to work towards the “denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.
And it did so in stark terms, according to a statement relayed by the KCNA state news agency.
“The US is fatally mistaken if it went to the extent of regarding that the DPRK would be compelled to accept, out of its patience, demands reflecting its gangster-like mindset,” the statement said, referring to North Korea by its official initials.
Pyongyang noted that it had already destroyed a nuclear test site – a concession that Trump has publicly hailed as a victory for peace – and lamented that Pompeo had proved unwilling to match this with US concessions.
It dismissed Trump’s unilateral order to suspend joint US and South Korean war games as a cosmetic and “highly reversible” concession and criticised US negotiators who “never mentioned” the subject of bringing the 1953 Korean war to a formal end with a peace treaty.
