U.S. State Department Says Freeze Deal to Be Start of North Korea’s Denuclearization
The question becomes what is the Trump administration going to give up in return for a freeze deal?:
The United States would hope to see a freeze in the North Korean nuclear program as the start of a process of denuclearization, the State Department said on Tuesday, ahead of fresh talks with Pyongyang supposed to take place this month.
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had a surprise meeting at the end of June in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume a working-level dialogue, stalled since a failed summit in Vietnam in February.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the talks would likely happen “sometime in July … probably in the next two or three weeks.”
The Trump administration has dismissed a New York Times report that said an idea was taking shape among U.S. officials to seek to negotiate a nuclear freeze by North Korea, rather than its complete denuclearization, thereby tacitly accepting it as a nuclear state.
“(A) freeze, you know, that would never be the resolution of a process. That would never be the end of a process,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told a regular news briefing. “That would (be) something that we would certainly hope to see at the beginning. But I don’t think that the administration has ever characterized a freeze as being the end goal. That would be at the beginning of the process.”
Reuters
You can read more at the link, but if the Trump administration allows the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Kumgang Tours this would be a similar deal to what the Bush administration signed that the Kim regime later broke. However, that deal did cause North Korea to behave while the Bush administration was focused on the surge strategy in Iraq. The Trump administration could be thinking the same thing to get the Kim regime to behave during the upcoming reelection campaign and then get tough later on by pushing for real denuclearization.
Or Iran…
There’s two ways to negotiate with countries like Iran and North Korea. We’ve tried one way for a long time with no success. I think it’s time we tried the other way.
Make them blink first. Every time we do, they (and their Russian and Chinese buddies) laugh us to scorn as they just don’t change.
That doesn’t mean letting Bolton run everything; but Trump knows how to play the game. Based on the last two years, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.