North Korea rebuffs US offer of nuclear talks in December
- Pyongyang’s nuclear negotiator described the proposal as having the ‘sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass with ease’ a year-end deadline
- Statement came after the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman reaffirmed that the US was ready to use the ‘full range’ of its capabilities to protect South Korea
Kim Myong-gil, the North’s nuclear negotiator, said in a report carried by state media that Stephen Biegun, his US counterpart who jointly led last month’s failed denuclearisation talks in Stockholm, had offered through a third country to meet again.
But the meeting fell apart, with Kim saying the US side failed to present a new approach.
“If the negotiated solution of issues is possible, we are ready to meet with the US at any place and any time,” Kim Myong-gil said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
But he called Biegun’s proposal a “sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass with ease” Pyongyang’s year-end deadline. “We have no willingness to have such negotiations.”
Milley met his South Korean counterpart, General Park Han-ki, for the annual Military Committee Meeting on Thursday.
Both sides discussed ways to maintain solid defence posture and a planned transfer of wartime operational control to South Korea, a joint statement said, even as they have scaled back joint exercises to expedite negotiations with North Korea.
Milley reiterated the “continued commitment to providing extended deterrence”, the statement said.
“He affirmed that the United States remains prepared to respond to any attack on the Korean peninsula, using the full range of US military capabilities.”
US Defence Secretary Mark Esper was arriving in Seoul later on Thursday, ahead of a meeting with South Korean Defence Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo for the annual security consultative meeting on Friday.
Esper said on Wednesday that he was open to changes in US military activity in South Korea if it helped diplomats trying to jump-start stalled talks with North Korea.
Pyongyang has derided the US-South Korea exercises as hostile, even in the current reduced form. On Wednesday, it threatened to retaliate if the allies go ahead with scheduled drills in a rare statement from the State Affairs Commission, a top governing body chaired by Kim Jong-un.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at South Korea’s Sejong Institute think tank, said the North’s statement appeared to be aimed at justifying future North Korean military actions.
Milley has hinted at raising the troop cost-sharing and Japan issues, though the joint statement did not address them directly.
Trump’s insistence that Seoul take on a greater share of the cost of the 28,500-strong US military presence as deterrence against North Korea has rattled South Korea. It could also set a precedent for upcoming US negotiations on defence cost-sharing with other allies.
A South Korean lawmaker said last week that US officials demanded up to US$5 billion a year, more than five times what Seoul agreed to pay this year under a one-year deal.
Washington has also been pressing Seoul to reconsider its decision to scrap the GSOMIA intelligence-sharing pact with Japan. The pact, which South Korea decided not to renew, expires on November 23.
Esper said on Wednesday that GSOMIA “must be maintained” for cooperation between the US, South Korea and Japan against any “North Korean bad behaviour”.
Seoul’s Defence Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said on Thursday that it would re-examine GSOMIA “if Japan withdraws its unjust retaliatory measures and friendly relations between the two countries recover”.
Relations have plunged after South Korea’s top court last year ordered Japanese firms to compensate some wartime forced labourers, and Japan curbed exports of key industrial materials to South Korea in July.
