North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Sunday that he has “good personal memories” of his interactions with President Donald Trump, and sees “no reason not to” resume negotiations with the United States now that Trump is back in office – provided the U.S. “abandons its delusional obsession with denuclearization.”
Kim made his remarks during an address to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the faux “parliament” that exists solely to rubber-stamp the dictator’s decrees. North Korean state news agency KCNA published a transcript of his comments on Monday.
Kim’s “good memories” of Trump seemed like a positive response to Trump reminiscing about his “very good relationship” with Kim last month, and suggesting he would like to meet with the North Korean dictator again.
However, Kim rejected the notion of discussing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. As he has often done in the past, he claimed North Korea needs a nuclear deterrent to prevent the United States and South Korea from invading it.
“We will never lay down our nuclear weapons,” Kim vowed. “There will be no negotiations, now or ever, about trading anything with hostile countries in exchange for lifting sanctions.”
“The world already knows full well what the United States does after it makes a country give up its nuclear weapons and disarms [sic]. We will never give up our nuclear weapons,” he said.
Kim was also adamant in refusing to negotiate with South Korea – a rebuke to left-wing President Lee Jae-myung, who hoped to rebuild relations with Pyongyang after the fall of his hawkish conservative predecessor, Yoon Suk-yeol. Trump expressed his desire to meet with Kim again after a meeting with Lee at the White House in August.
In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Lee supported Trump meeting with Kim again, although he said he has no reason to believe Washington and Pyongyang are “engaging in concrete conversations” at the moment.
Lee said he still wants to reduce tensions between North and South Korea, although he did not foresee the resumption of direct talks between Seoul and Pyongyang in the near future.
On Monday, Lee told the BBC that North Korea is currently producing 15 to 20 nuclear warheads per year. He said he would support a bilateral agreement between Kim and Trump to freeze new weapons production, without any reduction in North Korea’s stockpile, as a “feasible, realistic alternative” to denuclearization.
“So long as we do not give up on the long-term goal of denuclearization, I believe there are clear benefits to having North Korea stop its nuclear and missile development,” he said.
“The question is whether we persist with fruitless attempts towards the ultimate goal, or we set more realistic goals and achieve some of them,” he said.
Lee said Trump and Kim “seem to have a degree of mutual trust,” so he was content to let Trump handle any prospective negotiations. In addition to a nuclear freeze, he hoped Trump might be able to prevent North Korea from sinking deeper into its malevolent alliance with China and Russia.
“Seeing China, Russia and North Korea become so close is clearly not desirable for us,” he said, contending that South Korea could only respond by working more closely with the United States and Japan on security issues.
“The world is dividing into two camps, and South Korea is positioned right on the border,” he said. “This situation is become increasingly difficult. But these camps cannot completely shut their doors, so we can position ourselves somewhere in the middle.”
Read the full article here