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S. Korea’s Moon urges new US-North denuclearisation talks
SEOUL, March 4, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – South Korea President Moon Jae-in on
Monday urged the US and North Korea to quickly resume denuclearisation talks
after their Hanoi summit last week ended without a deal.
Moon, who has adopted a dovish approach to Pyongyang and brokered the US-
North Korea talks process, urged his officials to find out what exactly had
gone awry at the high-stakes meeting, and predicted a deal would ultimately
be reached.
“We hope that both countries will continue their dialogue and that their
leaders meet again quickly to reach an agreement that was held off this
time,” Moon said during a security meeting in Seoul.
“While I believe the North-US talks will produce an agreement in the end, I
ask officials to work hard for the resumption of working-level talks between
the US and the North as it is not favourable to have a long absence or
stalemate in talks.”
The second meeting between US President Donald Trump and the North’s Kim
Jong Un broke up in disarray Thursday in the Vietnamese capital, without even
a joint statement.
Trump said at a press conference after the summit that the North Koreans
had wanted sanctions against Pyongyang “lifted in their entirety”.
According to a senior US official, Pyongyang in return offered only to
close down “a portion of the Yongbyon complex”, a sprawling site covering
multiple nuclear facilities — and the North is believed to have other
uranium enrichment plants.
North Korea rebuffed the claims, saying it had only wanted some measures
eased, and that its proposal to close “all the nuclear production facilities”
at Yongbyon was its best and final offer.
“I ask that we find out the exact gap between the two sides that led to a
no-deal at the Hanoi summit and explore ways to narrow down that gap,” Moon
said.
About 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Pyongyang, Yongbyon is home to the
country’s first nuclear reactor, and is the only known source of plutonium
for the North’s weapons programme.
Yongbyon is not believed to be the North’s only uranium enrichment facility
and closing it down would not in and of itself signal an end to the country’s
atomic programme.
However, Moon said that if all Yongbyon facilities were “terminated in
entirety, it should be considered the North’s denuclearisation has entered an
irreversible stage.”
The Yongbyon site is “the foundation of North Korean nuclear facilities”,
he added.
BSS/AFP/FI/1454 hrs