WASHINGTON: The US appeal at the United Nations for “full enforcement” of sanctions against North Korea underscored the difficulty of attaining real progress on denuclearisation,…
WASHINGTON: The US appeal at the United Nations for “full enforcement” of sanctions against North Korea underscored the difficulty of attaining real progress on denuclearisation, more than a month after the much-vaunted Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit.
In their joint declaration after the historic meeting Jun 12 in Singapore, the North Korean leader “reaffirmed his commitment” to the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.”
But the actual details of the process, including how and by what timetable the North’s nuclear program is to be dismantled, have yet to be negotiated.
At the time, the US administration insisted on the “urgency” of denuclearisation, which was supposed to begin “very quickly.”
“We’re hopeful we can get it done” by 2020, before the end of Trump’s current presidential term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the time.
Pompeo has been charged with the challenge of putting meat on the bare bones of the Singapore commitment.
But 40 days and one apparently fruitless visit by Pompeo to Pyongyang later, the tone of the American side has clearly changed.
“We have no time limit,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “We have no speed limit.”
Asked about the change in tone, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert sought to reassure: “We have teams in place that are working very hard on this issue every day,” she said. “We have said there’s a lot of work left to be done.”
A 15-YEAR PROCESS?
For several experts who had warned that the Singapore summit, for all its hype, pomp and high expectations, had provided only the barest outline of a long and arduous process, the return to reality is welcome.
