Trump Won’t Let Latest North Korea Missile Test Halt Nuke Talks
Trump Won’t Let Latest North Korea Missile Test Halt Nuke Talks
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and North Korea are set to meet for the first time in months for working-level nuclear discussions, with President Donald Trump saying Pyongyang’s most provocative missile test in two years wouldn’t derail them.
North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Kim Myong Gil has arrived in Stockholm, Yonhap News of South Korea reported, ahead of formal nuclear negotiations that are set to start Saturday, with a preliminary contact Friday. The working-level talks will be the first in about eight months and come as North Korea has been pushing the Trump administration to ease sanctions choking its paltry economy, while increasing its bargaining leverage through military provocations.
“They want to talk, and we’ll be talking to them soon,” Trump said Thursday, brushing off North Korea’s launch the day before of a submarine-based ballistic missile with a maximum range that’s estimated at about 1,900 kilometers and would qualify as medium range. The test advanced leader Kim Jong Un’s capabilities for a two-pronged nuclear deterrent designed for quick strikes on the U.S. and its allies from mobile launchers on land and hard-to-track submarines.
The working-level talks aren’t expected to provide breakthroughs in the sputtering nuclear discussions, but will revive a process that has provided few results despite three meetings between Kim Jong Un and Trump since their landmark June 2018 summit in Singapore.
“Denuclearization will inevitably be a very long, complicated process because of the time it takes to negotiate agreements, the size and complexity of North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure, and North Korean negotiating style,” said Duyeon Kim, a Seoul-based adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
The North Korean leader has given Trump until the end of the year to change course or risk a new path. He has reminded the region of the security risks posed by his mercurial state through a series of launches of at least 20 missiles since May, all of which had been short-range until Wednesday’s test.
One of Trump’s major foreign policy initiatives has been direct dealings with Kim Jong Un. He’s downplayed recent launches and insisted that Kim has lived up by his pledge to halt tests of nuclear devices and intercontinental ballistic missiles -- the last of which was fired off in November 2017.
Nuclear Envoy
“There was a new sign from the U.S. side so I’m going with high expectations and optimism,” Kim Myong Gil told reporters Thursday at Beijing’s international airport, saying in a video broadcast by Japanese TV network TBS that he was on his way to the talks. He didn’t elaborate further.
The State Department said Tuesday that working-level talks would be held this week, but didn’t announce a location.
Since Trump and Kim first met, weapons experts have said North Korea has been adding fissile material to its nuclear arsenal and improving its ability to launch a nuclear strike against the U.S. and two of its key Asian allies, Japan and South Korea.
Kim and Trump agreed at a June 30 meeting in the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula to hold working-level talks in a matter of weeks.
--With assistance from Min Jeong Lee.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jon Herskovitz in Tokyo at jherskovitz@bloomberg.net;Shinhye Kang in Seoul at skang24@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Karen Leigh
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