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N. Korea fires ‘projectiles’ after offering talks with US
SEOUL, Sept 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – North Korea on Tuesday fired projectiles
toward the sea, South Korea’s military said, hours after Pyongyang said it is
willing to hold working-level talks with the United States in late September.
Negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington have been gridlocked since a
second summit between the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald
Trump in February ended without a deal.
North Korea twice launched “unidentified projectiles” Tuesday morning in
an easterly direction that flew approximately 330 kilometres (205 miles) from
the Kaechon area in South Pyongan province, according to the South Korean
military.
“We urge the North to stop such acts that escalate tensions in the
region,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
No further details were immediately available but these were the latest to
be fired since July. Previous launches have been identified as short-range
missiles.
“We are aware of reports of projectiles launched from North Korea,” a
senior US official said. “We are continuing to monitor the situation and
consulting closely with our allies in the region.”
Trump and Kim had agreed to restart working-level dialogue during an
impromptu meeting at the Demilitarised Zone dividing the nuclear-armed North
and South Korea in June, but those talks have yet to begin.
“We have willingness to sit with the US side for comprehensive discussions
of the issues we have so far taken up at the time and place to be agreed late
in September,” Choe Son Hui, the North’s vice foreign minister, said in a
statement carried on Monday by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Choe’s comment followed her warning in late August that North Korea’s
“expectations of dialogue with the US are gradually disappearing”, after
Pyongyang conducted weapons tests to protest joint US-South Korean military
exercises.
Asked about the proposal for lower-level talks in September, Trump told
reporters: “I have a very good relationship with Chairman Kim. I always say
having meetings is a good thing. We’ll see what happens.”
The period suggested by North Korea would correspond with the United
Nations General Assembly in New York.
On Monday, Choe recalled Kim’s comments that the North would wait until
the end of the year for Washington to “quit its current calculation method”.
She repeated Pyongyang’s call for the US to come up with a “calculation
method acceptable to us” or risk jeopardising the entire diplomatic process.
When asked by AFP about the latest North Korean offer, a State Department
official replied: “We don’t have any meetings to announce at this time.”
– Nuclear warhead development –
Kim and Trump adopted a vaguely-worded statement on the “complete
denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” at their first summit in Singapore
in June last year, but little progress has since been made on dismantling
Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
A report published by a United Nations panel of experts last week said
North Korea’s development of nuclear warheads has not stopped, despite the
moratorium it declared on nuclear blasts and long-range missile launches.
US officials have called North Korea’s recent short-range missile launches
provocations, although Trump himself has avoided criticising them.
Pyongyang is barred from ballistic missile tests under UN resolutions, and
its previous short-range missile tests have been condemned by European
members of the UN Security Council.
North Korea is under heavy US and UN sanctions over its weapons programmes,
and has criticised Washington’s position that sanctions against the isolated
regime will not be lifted until the country gives up its nuclear weapons.
Pyongyang’s latest comments on talks come after the US special envoy to
North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said the North must stop blocking nuclear talks.
“If we are to succeed, North Korea must set aside its search for obstacles
to negotiations and instead seek the opportunities for engagement while that
opportunity lasts,” he said on Friday.
“We have made clear to North Korea that we are prepared to engage as soon
as we hear from them,” he said on Friday. “We are ready, but we cannot do
this by ourselves.”
BSS/AFP/FI/1304 hrs