Ahead of talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, North Korea ramps up pressure on the US, asking Mike Pompeo to step aside in future nuclear negotiations
- After test-firing a mysterious new weapon, country’s foreign ministry asks that ‘reckless’ Pompeo be replaced during talks
North Korea attempted to turn up the heat on the US, demanding that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo be removed from nuclear negotiations and test-firing a new mystery weapon.
A senior North Korean diplomat on Thursday accused Pompeo of “reckless remarks” that had undermined talks between Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump, and urged his replacement as the US point man. While the regime has criticised Pompeo often since Trump’s first meeting with Kim in June, it was the first time an official had formally demanded his replacement.
Returning to military optics for the first time in five months, Kim on Tuesday paid a surprise visit to an Air Force base to inspect fighter combat readiness and followed that up the next day by supervising the test of what the North’s official media described ominously but ambiguously – and without any photos or video – as a new type of “tactical guided weapon”.
The military-related posturing comes after Kim expressed deep disappointment earlier this month with what the North claims was an inflexible, “gangster-like” demands by the US in Hanoi.
It also comes amid reports that Kim may hold his first summit with Putin next week in Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East.
Putin has been something of an outsider over the past year as Kim has held multiple summits with the leaders of China, the United States and South Korea. But he could provide important political cover or economic aid for Pyongyang – and a potential headache for Trump – if he chooses to play a bigger role.
Kim will be travelling to the country by special train and hold his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russky Island off the city of Vladivostok, according to the sources.
A team of North Korean security staffers is scheduled to arrive in Vladivostok next Tuesday on a special flight operated by the country’s national carrier Air Koryo, a Russian government official has said.
The group may be part of the security detail for Kim’s visit, his first to Russia since taking power.
Russky Island was the venue of the leaders’ meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum hosted by Russia in 2012.
A separate Russian government official said a high-level North Korean official is currently in Vladivostok. The North Korean is believed to be Kim Chang Son, a close aide of Kim Jong-un.
Putin in May last year invited the North Korean leader to visit Russia.
Though Kim claims he still has a good personal relationship with the US president, he and senior North Korean officials have shown increasing frustration with Trump’s top advisers, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.
“The Hanoi summit gives us a lesson that whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in, the talks go wrong without any results even from the point close to success,” Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the American desk at the North’s Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying on Thursday. “I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but (some) other person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us.”
The Foreign Ministry said “no one can predict” the situation on the Korean peninsula if the United States does not abandon the “root cause” that compelled Pyongyang to develop its nuclear program, according to a statement quoting senior official Kwon Jong Gun, reported by the Korean Central News Agency and picked up by Reuters.
Pompeo is “talking nonsense” by trying to finish working-level negotiations between North Korea and the United States by the end of the year, “which subjects him to public ridicule,” the statement said.
“We cannot be aware of Pompeo’s ulterior motive behind his self-indulgence in reckless remarks; whether he is indeed unable to understand words properly or just pretending on purpose. However, it is a very dangerous situation if he really did not grasp the meaning,” it said, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, in an address to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s version of parliament, Kim gave the US until the end of the year to come up with a more mutually acceptable negotiation strategy.
For Pyongyang, that would mean lifting the sanctions it has imposed against the North over its development of nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.
Kim indicated, however, that he would in the meantime maintain his self-imposed moratorium on nuclear tests and long-range missile launches and he appears to be standing by that vow.
US military officials said they did not detect any significant missile launches on Wednesday and the North’s description of the “newly developed ultra-modern tactical weapon” suggested it might have instead been an anti-tank guided missile or other short-range system.
If so, it was likely intended to be a response to recent military drills by US and South Korea.
Just before the reports of the weapon test, a North-run propaganda website said the drills fuel “the mood for a fight and risks of war”.
