North Korea has dropped its demand that American troops be removed from South Korea as a condition for giving up its nuclear weapons, South Korea’s president said Thursday in presenting the idea to the United States, The New York Times informed.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in portrayed the proposal as a concession on the eve of talks involving the two Koreas and the United States, as Pyongyang has long demanded that the 28,500 American troops be withdrawn, citing their presence as a pretext to justify its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
But in Washington, the Trump administration privately dismissed the idea that it was a capitulation by the North because an American withdrawal from the South was never on the table. Mike Pompeo, the CIA director whom President Trump secretly sent to Pyongyang two weeks ago to meet Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, did not ask him to take such a step, according to senior officials, the Times informed.
The move could increase pressure on the United States to support negotiations between North and South Korea on a peace treaty that would end the Korean War. While Trump gave those talks his blessing this week, officials said his ultimate goal is to force North Korea to relinquish its nuclear program. A peace treaty, they said, should be signed only after the North has given up its weapons.
According to The New York Times, Trump has expressed excitement about his own planned summit meeting with Kim, but on Wednesday, he said he was ready to bail out before, or even during, the meeting if he concluded that diplomacy was not bearing fruit. He also said the United States would keep sanctions on North Korea until it ends its nuclear program.
“We have great respect for many aspects of what they’re doing, but we have to get it together. We have to end nuclear weapons,” Trump said at a news conference with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan.
In South Korea, where Moon announced Kim’s shift, he said it had encouraged the United States to proceed with plans to hold its first-ever summit meeting with North Korea, adding that the North was already showing a willingness to make concessions.
When Moon’s special envoys met with Kim in Pyongyang last month, Kim said his country would no longer need nuclear weapons if it did not feel “threatened militarily” and was provided with “security guarantees.” North Korea issued an official government statement as recently as 2016 calling on Washington to announce the withdrawal of American troops if it wanted to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
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