LONDON (Reuters) – Iran hit back at a U.S. offer of negotiations on Thursday, saying Washington had violated the terms of the last big deal they agreed, the 2015 nuclear accord.
FILE PHOTO: Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif smiles during a meeting with Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, in Bern, Switzerland, July 2, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of that nuclear accord – which curbed Iran’s atomic activities in return for sanctions relief – in May, saying it did not go far enough.
The U.S. special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, said on Wednesday that Washington now wanted to negotiate a treaty that included Tehran’s ballistic missile programme and its regional behaviour.
U.S. officials suggested Kim was trying to ease the economic pressure on him to curb his nuclear programs and to undercut the rationale for U.S. troops being based in South Korea by improving relations with Seoul.
The United States has some 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea to deter North Korean attack. Pyongyang has long sought their withdrawal and Trump has questioned their rationale and cost.
“There is nothing the North has offered so far that would constitute irreversible movement toward denuclearisation, however you define that, by January 2021 or any other time, or even a reduction of the military threat it poses to the South and the region,” said a U.S. intelligence official.
“Everything that’s out there now is conditional on U.S. actions that would reduce the pressure on the North to cooperate or (is) filled with loopholes and exit ramps,” added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials said the ambiguity about what Washington was supposed to do for the North to close its nuclear complex at Yongbyon gave Kim room to argue that Washington had not done enough for North Korea to follow through on its pledges.
TRUMP: ‘HE’S CALM, I’M CALM’
Even if North Korea were to shut down Yongbyon, officials and experts believe it has other secret nuclear facilities.
South Korea’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, said the reciprocal U.S. steps could include an end-of-war declaration. South Korea and the United States remain technically at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty.
Though Wednesday’s inter-Korean agreement failed to stipulate the North’s commitment to declare nuclear and missile facilities for inspection and eventual decommissioning, Seoul has been in talks with both Pyongyang and Washington over the issue, a senior South Korean official said.
“What North Korea really wants and their priorities may be different from ours,” the official told reporters on Thursday on condition of anonymity.
“We’re talking about a package that would carry many elements, including the declaration of the facilities, Yongbyon and Tongchang-ri, which are of U.S. interest, and from the North side, the issues of normalizing relations, ending the war and easing sanctions.”
Despite the doubts of U.S. officials and outside analysts, North Korea’s pledge at the summit with the South Korean president drew an enthusiastic response from Trump.
Speaking before Pompeo’s comments, Trump welcomed Kim’s pledges, calling them part of “tremendous progress” with Pyongyang on a number of fronts, and hailing “very good news” from the summit between the Koreas.
“He’s calm, I’m calm – so we’ll see what happens,” Trump, who last year threatened to destroy North Korea, told reporters.
‘THEATRICAL PROMISES’
Kim pledged to work toward the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” during two meetings with Moon earlier this year and at his summit with Trump.
But discussions over how to implement the vague commitments have since faltered and North Korea has consistently refused to give up its nuclear arsenal unilaterally.
Washington has demanded concrete action, such as a full disclosure of North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities, before agreeing to Pyongyang’s key goals, including an easing of international sanctions and an official end to the Korean War.
While North Korea has stopped nuclear and missile tests in the past year, it did not allow international inspections of its dismantling of its Punggye-ri nuclear test site in May, drawing criticism that its action was for show and could be reversed.
The day after the June 12 Trump-Kim summit, Pompeo said he hoped to achieve “major disarmament” by North Korea by the end of Trump’s first term in January 2021.
His latest statement that the process “should be completed by January 2021” may be a signal Washington will not wait forever.
“The statement clearly implies that inter-Korean summits and theatrical promises to dismantle the odd facility simply can’t substitute for a negotiating process on the nuclear issue,” said the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Daniel Russel.
“Invoking the end of Trump’s term in January 2021 is another way of saying to the North that American patience is not unlimited and that Kim Jong Un won’t be able to sidestep denuclearisation indefinitely,” Russel added.
Reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Hyonhee Shin in Seoul; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee, Soyoung Kim and Joint Press Corps, Jeongmin Kim, Haejin Choi and Ju-min Park in Seoul, Ben Blanchard and Zhang Min in Beijing, and Roberta Rampton, David Brunnstrom and John Walcott in Washington; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by David Gregorio, Peter Cooney and Lincoln Feast.
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