North Korea has expressed a desire for the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula without attaching preconditions such as the withdrawal of US troops, the South Korean president has said.
The statement, unconfirmed by North Korea, comes before a summit between the leaders of the two countries on 27 April, to be followed in May or June by a meeting between Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and Donald Trump.
The US president on Wednesday pledged to meet Kim “in the coming weeks” but said he was prepared to walk away if the talks were not fruitful.
The key question at any summit between Trump and Kim is whether the North Korean leader is serious about dismantling his regime’s nuclear weapons, and what he would demand from the US in return.
The South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, told reporters that North Korea had not “attached any conditions that the US cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea. All they are expressing is the end of hostile policies against North Korea, followed by a guarantee of security.”
Robert Wood, the top US envoy to the UN-hosted conference on disarmament, said the country would maintain a “maximum pressure campaign” to convince North Korea to denuclearise, even as preparations for the summit continued, adding that it “has had an important impact in the North’s decision to return to the table”.
At a news conference on Thursday, before a meeting next week on nuclear nonproliferation, Wood said the US welcomed Pyongyang’s willingness to talk about denuclearisation, and called the summit planned for late May or early June a “momentous time”.
Meanwhile, the European Union imposed travel bans and asset freezes on four people suspected of “deceptive financial practices” to benefit North Korea’s arms programme.
