Tag Archives: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Malawi, Politics, Regional, Top News

White House takes cautious approach on North Korea overture

Maravi Post Reporter

WASHINGTON (AP)— The White House says it will wait and see whether a new overture by North Korea for talks with the United States means it is serious about disarming, a step President Donald Trump and other world leaders agree must be the outcome of any future dialogue.

“We will see,” was the response from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was on the Korean peninsula Sunday as a member of the U.S. delegation attending the Olympic games in South Korea. The delegation was led by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

Sanders said President Trump remains committed to achieving the “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of the peninsula and that his “maximum pressure campaign” against North Korea must continue until it abandons its nuclear and missile programs.

Trump imposed fresh sanctions against North Korea late last week as part of the pressure effort.

During Sunday’s closing ceremony for the games, the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced that a North Korean delegate to the Olympics said his country is willing to hold talks with the U.S.

The move comes after decades of tensions between the two countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations, and a year of escalating rhetoric, including threats of war, between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The North has “ample intentions of holding talks with the United States,” Moon’s office said. The North’s delegation also agreed that “South-North relations and U.S.-North Korean relations should be improved together,” the statement said.

Sanders said the U.S., South Korea and the international community “broadly agree” that denuclearization must be the outcome of any dialogue with North Korea. She said North Korea has a bright path ahead of it if it chooses denuclearization.

“We will see if Pyongyang’s message today, that it is willing to hold talks, represents the first steps along the path to denuclearization,” she said in a written statement. “In the meantime, the United States and the world must continue to make clear that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are a dead end.”

Trump once scolded Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who favors diplomacy with North Korea over military confrontation, for “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” which is Trump’s derisive nickname for North Korea’s leader.

At the Olympics opening ceremony earlier this month, the North Korean leader’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, shared a VIP box with Moon and Vice President Mike Pence, who led a separate U.S. delegation, creating some awkward moments.

Though Pence stood to cheer the entrance of the U.S. team, he remained seated when athletes from North and South Korea marched together behind a “unification” flag, leaving Moon to instinctively turn around and shake Kim’s sister’s hand.

Pence and Kim Yo Jong did not speak. Pence’s office claimed afterward that the North pulled out of a planned meeting at the last minute.

During her visit, Ivanka Trump sat in the same box with Kim Yong Choi, vice chairman of North Korea’s ruling Worker’s Party Central Committee.

They did not appear to interact when Jae-in shook hands with dignitaries at the beginning of Sunday’s closing ceremony.

Trump stepped up the pressure campaign against North Korea on Friday by slapping sanctions on scores of companies and ships accused of illicit trading with the pariah nation.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the U.S. has now blacklisted virtually all ships being used by the North.

Trump has vowed to use force if necessary to prevent North Korea from acquiring a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the U.S. mainland.

At a White House news conference on Friday, he warned that the U.S. would move to “phase two” in its pressure campaign if sanctions don’t work.

Trump said such a step could be “very rough” and “very unfortunate for the world.” He did not elaborate.

“If we can make a deal it will be a great thing. If we can’t, something will have to happen,” Trump said.

Politics, Regional

North Korea imposes more demands on South Korea over the Olympics

Maravi Post Reporter

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is huddling Tuesday with nations that fought on America’s side in the Korean War, looking to increase economic pressure on North Korea over its nuclear weapons even as hopes rise for diplomacy. (Jan. 16)

A week after North Korea said it would send a delegation to next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea, the regime’s demands have taken on a sinister pattern.

Reports emerged Tuesday that North Korea demanded the South return defectors who fled the totalitarian regime. That came after requiring that South Korea pay the North’s Olympic costs and an agreement by the United States and South Korea to suspend a planned joint military exercise.

The demands came to light since last week’s talks between North and South Korea — the first sit-down between the two countries in more than two years.

“This is why all those crotchety hawks evinced such skepticism at North Korea’s talks,” tweeted Robert Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University in South Korea. “We all saw this coming.”

The South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo reported Tuesday that the North demanded the return of 12 women who escaped in 2016 from their jobs at restaurant in Ningbo, China, a demand the paper said the South is legally bound to refuse.

South Korea’s government said the timing is too sensitive to comment, the newspaper said.

The North has warned that it will not agree to more reunions for families split by the Korean War unless the defectors, and another woman who fled from elsewhere, are returned.

The talks last week occurred after the U.S. agreed to South Korea’s request to postpone a large military exercise, which usually involves 30,000 American troops and 200,000 South Koreans, until after the Olympics are held Feb. 9-25. in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

On Friday,a North Korean state-run publication issued a demand for a “permanent halt” to U.S.-South Korean military drills while inter-Korean talks continue, according to The Strait Times of Singapore.

“Inter-Korean talks and war drill can never be compatible,” the North Korean publication, Uriminzokkiri, declared.

North Korea, which is under sanctions by the United Nations and U.S. aimed at ending its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, also succeeded in getting South Korea to agree to fund its Olympic delegation, which will include as many as 500 athletes, performers, officials and reporters, according to The Hankyoreh, a South Korean online publication.

South Korea will pay the entire delegation’s expenses, said author and Korea analyst Gordon Chang.

“This is typical. (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s) family playbook goes back several decades,” Chang said. “First they refuse to talk to South Korea. Then they make a bold overture. Next comes demands and then they throw a tantrum.”

If the Trump administration puts enough pressure on North Korea, the Kim family might agree it has no choice but to disarm, Chang said. But the White House has yet to impose sanctions where they would be most effective — on its top two trading partners, China and Russia, he added.

The North Korean demands were revealed as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met Tuesday in Vancouver with foreign ministers from 20 nations that sided with the U.S. during the Korean War, which ended in 1953, to discuss how to pressure North Korea to quit its nuclear weapons and missile programs.

“We must increase the costs of the regime’s behavior to the point that North Korea must come to the table for credible negotiations,” Tillerson said in his opening comments.

Tillerson called for interdiction operations at sea to