Washington and Pyongyang remain at loggerheads over which should come first: denuclearization or a peace agreement.
This week, U. S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to meet with North Korea’s Kim Yong Chol. The meeting is clearly designed to reinvigorate U. S.-North Korean discussions, focusing primarily on North Korean nuclear proliferation, which have made little headway in building upon the vague joint statement that President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un issued at the conclusion of their much-publicized summit in June. In order to kickstart negotiations, it would be prudent for the Trump administration to focus on negotiating a peace treaty to end the Korean War and reserve discussion of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula for follow-up negotiations.
Pyongyang has made it quite clear that securing a peace declaration is one of its top priorities. Kim Jong Un reportedly broached the topic with Trump during their June meeting in Singapore, and Pyongyang has continued to press the issue. In September, for instance, North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper editorialized that “The United States shouldn’t delay any further an end-of-war declaration, which the U. S. president promised at the Singapore summit.”
The Trump administration insists, however, that North Korean denuclearization is a precondition for an official end to the Korean War. Recently, following meetings in Seoul with his South Korean counterpart, U. S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun asserted that although the United States is committed to ending hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, “the primary requirement for us to get to the end point is to achieve final, fully, verified denuclearization of North Korea.” Washington and Pyongyang remain at loggerheads over which should come first: denuclearization or a peace agreement.
For a number of reasons, the Trump administration should put nuclear talks on the back burner and focus on negotiating an end to the Korean War.
