Kim Jong Un slams American unilateralism, to reconsider talks only if US is willing to negotiate

Kim Jong Un slams American unilateralism, to reconsider talks only if US is willingto negotiate

Kim isn’t playing by the ‘America First’ doctrine

by FRANK SELLERSMay 16, 2018, 08:37

North Korea is not willing to play a game with America where America alone gets ‘the better end of the deal’, as Trump would put it.

Some sort of arrangement whereby North Korea has no assurance that America won’t eventually march in and overthrow the regime and give Kim the Gadhafi treatment over some trumped up pretext, as in Libya, while North Korea has agreed to give up its nuclear program is simply not what this process has been about.

America has to be willing to put some skin in the game and to compromise with Pyongyang if it is to do the same, in essence, some sort of exchange of value.

Pyongyang gives up its nukes under the assurance that Washington will conduct or rehearse no offensive against it. 

But Trump has already said he’s not sitting down with Kim unless he knows up front that he’s going to ‘win’, and has already backed out of one nuclear deal so far this month. RT reports:

Pyongyang is not interested in any negotiations that envisage only unilateral denuclearization without guarantees North Korea won’t be left totally defenseless like Libya in case of aggression, deputy foreign minister has said.

Criticizing Washington’s demands for unilateral concessions and unconditional “nuclear abandonment,” North Korea’s first vice minister of foreign affairs Kim Kye-gwan recalled the eventual fate of Libya and said such negotiations style is unacceptable for Pyongyang.

“This is not an attempt to solve the problem through dialogue but rather the manifestation …to force the destiny of the collapsed Libya and Iraq to our dignified state,” Kim said, according to KCNA.

“I doubt whether the United States really wants sound dialogue and negotiation,” Kim added, again noting that “the world is so well aware that our country is not Libya or Iraq.”

Denouncing the ongoing “sanctions pressure offensive” against the North, he accused Washington of misrepresenting North Korea’s “generosity and bold measures as an expression of weakness.”

“We will not be interested in talks anymore if (they) only try to push us unilaterally into a corner and force us to give up nukes,” he said. “It would be inevitable to reconsider whether to respond to the upcoming summit with the US.”

Meanwhile, Seoul has expressed that it regrets Kim’s decision, stressing that the South is committed to the declarations made between Kim and Moon.

South Korea has accused its northern neighbor of undermining the spirit of reconciliation after Pyongyang abruptly called off Wednesday’s high-level intra-Korean meeting in protest over joint US-S. Korean military drills.

“It is regrettable that the North’s unilateral move to postpone the high-level inter-Korean talks, citing the annual South Korea-US air drills does not conform with the spirit and purpose of the agreements reached between the leaders of the two countries,” the unification ministry said in a statement cited by news agency Yonhap.

South Korea urged Pyongyang to return to the negotiations table, stressing that Seoul remains “strongly committed” to the so-called Panmunjom Declaration, adopted during the historic summit of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in on April 27.

With America’s history of hostility against nations that have previously disarmed, it’s a wonder that things have made it as far as they have. Perhaps certain security guarantees can manage to manifest in the upcoming weeks, the process could resume, that is assuming that the US is truly interested in a peace deal and denuclearization, which could potentially put the South’s participation in the missile defense system in jeopardy. And no more practicing the neutralization of the North.