Washington
\nThe United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, despite US President Donald Trump\u2019s public assertion that such talks are a waste of time.<\/p>\n
Using the so-called \u201cNew York channel,\u201d Joseph Yun, US negotiator with North Korea, has been in contact with diplomats at Pyongyang\u2019s United Nations mission, the official said, at a time when an exchange of bellicose insults between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fueled fears of military conflict.<\/p>\n
While US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on October 17 said he would continue \u201cdiplomatic efforts … until the first bomb drops,\u201d the official\u2019s comments were the clearest sign the United States was directly discussing issues beyond the release of American prisoners, despite Trump having dismissed direct talks as pointless.<\/p>\n
There is no sign, however, that the behind-the-scenes communications have improved a relationship vexed by North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile tests, the death of US university student Otto Warmbier days after his release by Pyongyang in June and the detention of three other Americans.<\/p>\n
Word of quiet engagement with Pyongyang comes despite Trump\u2019s comments, North Korea\u2019s weapons advances and suggestions by some US and South Korean officials that Yun\u2019s interactions with North Koreans had been reined in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has not been limited at all, both (in) frequency and substance,\u201d said the senior State Department official.<\/p>\n
Among the points that Yun has made to his North Korean interlocutors is to \u201cstop testing\u201d nuclear bombs and missiles, the official said.<\/p>\n
North Korea this year conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation and has test-fired a volley of missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that, if perfected, could in theory reach the United States mainland.<\/p>\n
The possibility that Pyongyang may be closer to attaching a nuclear warhead to an ICBM has alarmed the Trump administration, which in April unveiled a policy of \u201cmaximum pressure and engagement\u201d that has so far failed to deter North Korea.<\/p>\n
At the start of Trump\u2019s presidency, Yun\u2019s instructions were limited to seeking the release of US prisoners.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is (now) a broader mandate than that,\u201d said the State Department official, declining, however, to address whether authority had been given to discuss North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile programme.<\/p>\n
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has urged all United Nations members to fully and transparently implement sanctions against North Korea, which he said has emerged as a global threat.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the United Nations on Sept. 19, Trump vowed to \u201ctotally destroy\u201d North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies, raising anxieties about the possibility of military conflict.<\/p>\n
Twelve days later, after Tillerson said Washington was probing for a diplomatic opening, Trump said on Twitter that his chief diplomat was \u201cwasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man\u201d – his mocking nickname for the North Korean leader.<\/p>\n
Democratic US senators introduced a bill on Tuesday they said would prevent Trump from launching a nuclear first strike on North Korea on his own, highlighting the issue days before the Republican\u2019s first presidential trip to Asia.<\/p>\n
A high ranking North Korean defector said in Washington on Tuesday that he backed the Trump administration\u2019s policy of pressuring Pyongyang through sanctions, coupled with \u201cmaximum engagement\u201d with the leadership and increased efforts to get information into North Korea to educate its people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI strongly believe in the use of soft power before taking any military actions,\u201d Thae Yong Ho, chief of mission at Pyongyang\u2019s embassy in London until he defected in 2016, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n
The New York channel is one of the few conduits the United States has for communicating with North Korea, which has itself made clear it has little interest in serious talks before it develops a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the continental United States.<\/p>\n
The last high-level contact between Yun and the North Koreans was when he traveled to North Korea in June to secure the release of Warmbier, who died shortly after he returned home in a coma, the State Department official said.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has demanded North Korea release three other US citizens: missionary Kim Dong Chul and academics Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington The United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, despite US President Donald Trump\u2019s public assertion that such talks are a waste of time. Using the so-called \u201cNew York channel,\u201d Joseph Yun, US negotiator with North Korea, has been in contact with diplomats at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9066,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9064\/revisions\/9066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}