HANOI, March 1, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – North Korea on Friday promised further
negotiations with the US, as both sides sought to hold open the door while
staking out their positions after their Hanoi summit spectacularly failed to
produce a nuclear deal.
The second meeting between the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and US President
Donald Trump broke up in disarray Thursday, with a signing ceremony cancelled
and no joint communique issued.
Each sought to blame the other’s intransigence for the deadlock, with
Trump saying Pyongyang wanted all sanctions imposed on it over its banned
weapons programmes lifted.
But in a rare late-night press briefing, the North Korean foreign minister
said it had only wanted some of the measures eased, and that its offer to
close “all the nuclear production facilities” at its Yongbyon complex was the
best it could ever offer. Despite the deadlock, the North’s official KCNA
news agency reported Friday that the two leaders had had a “constructive and
candid exchange”.
Relations between the two countries — on opposite sides of the
technically still-unfinished Korean War — had been “characterised by
mistrust and antagonism” for decades, it said, and there were “inevitable
hardships and difficulties” on the way to forging a new relationship. It
described the Hanoi meeting as “successful” and said Kim had promised Trump
another encounter.
Similarly, Trump said before leaving the Vietnamese capital that he hoped
to meet Kim again.
“Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times,” an
unusually downbeat Trump told reporters.
“I’d much rather do it right than do it fast,” he said, while reaffirming
his “close relationship” with Kim. “There’s a warmth that we have and I hope
that stays, I think it will.”
South Korea’s dovish President Moon Jae-in, who has brokered talks between
the US and the North, sought to take the positives.
The talks had made “meaningful progress”, with Trump and Kim building
“more trust” and “mutual understanding”, Moon said in a speech in Seoul.
– ‘Billions of dollars’ –
The outcome in Hanoi fell far short of the pre-meeting expectations and
hopes, after critics said their initial historic meeting in Singapore —
which produced only a vague commitment from Kim to work “toward complete
denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” — was more style over substance.
According to senior US officials, in the week leading up to the Hanoi
summit the North Koreans had demanded the lifting of effectively all the UN
Security Council economic sanctions imposed on Pyongyang since March 2016.
Before that date, the measures were largely focused on preventing
technology transfers, but more recent restrictions were imposed on several
valuable industries in an effort to force concessions from Pyongyang,
including coal and iron ore exports, seafood, and textile trade.
“It was basically all the sanctions except for armaments,” a senior US
official told reporters. “It tallies up to the tune of many, many billions of
dollars.”
In return, they were only offering to close “a portion of the Yongbyon
complex”, a sprawling site covering multiple different facilities — and the
North is believed to have other uranium enrichment plants.
Trump had urged Kim to go “all in” to secure a deal, the official said,
adding Washington was willing to do so.
“The weapons themselves need to be on the table,” he added, pointing to
both Pyongyang’s existing stock of atomic bombs and the ICBMs which can reach
the whole of the US mainland.
But the process was continuing and Washington was “encouraged by the
opportunities ahead of us”, the official said. “There’s still ample
opportunity to talk.”
– ‘Rollercoaster ride’ –
Analysts say the failure to reach a deal in Hanoi does not herald the end
of negotiations.
“I don’t think it’s a disaster and it doesn’t end the dialogue process,”
said Chris Green of the International Crisis Group.
Trump could not afford to do “a quote-unquote ‘bad deal'” in Hanoi, he
added. “I think it benefits him to look tough, to string this out.”
But others have pointed to a lack of preparation ahead of the meeting,
with the two sides unable to bridge the gaps between them in time.
Former US ambassador to South Korea Kathleen Stephens said the impasse
“highlighted the importance of working-level talks”.
Kim put “more emphasis” on sanctions relief than most observers predicted,
she said, and mutual liaison offices and an end-of-war statement had proved
insufficient to persuade him to go further with denuclearisation.
Joel Wit and Jenny Town of the respected Washington-based 38 North project
said that while there had been fears beforehand that Trump “was going to give
away the store, he did just the opposite, holding out for a better deal”.
“The two leaders are heavily invested in the process so hopefully, this
failed summit will just be one more chapter in the rollercoaster ride that is
the Trump presidency,” they wrote.
But if the North Korean process stalls and Trump’s domestic troubles mount,
they warned, North Korea may slip down his priority list.