N. Korea nuke steps fall shy of U.S. goals

SEOUL, South Korea -- Kim Jong Un, North Korea's leader, committed Wednesday to some concrete steps toward denuclearization -- most notably an offer to "permanently dismantle" facilities that are central to the production of fuel for nuclear warheads -- but they fell far short of what U.S. officials have demanded.

On the second day of his summit with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, Kim signed a series of agreements aimed at easing tensions between the two countries, like stopping military exercises and creating no-fly zones near their shared border. Kim also promised to visit Seoul, the South Korean capital, which would make him the first North Korean leader to make such a trip.

But more eye-catching to Washington was his promise to dismantle a missile engine test facility and a missile launchpad in northwest North Korea that have been essential to the country's development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and to invite outside experts to watch.

Kim also demanded "corresponding" measures from the United States, like declaring a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which was halted only with a truce. In return, he has proposed to "permanently dismantle" the Yongbyon nuclear complex, the heart of his country's nuclear program, among other steps.

President Donald Trump hailed the result of the talks in Pyongyang between Kim and Moon as "very exciting" and a sign of "tremendous progress" in his effort to get North Korea to denuclearize.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday invited North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho for talks in New York next week, during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. North Korean representatives also were invited to meet with the U.S. envoy for North Korean policy, Stephen Biegun, in Vienna "at the earliest opportunity."

"This will mark the beginning of negotiations to transform U.S.-DPRK relations through the process of rapid denuclearization of North Korea, to be completed by January 2021, as committed by Chairman Kim, and to construct a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula," Pompeo said in a statement, using the initials of the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Kim's offer to permanently dismantle the Yongbyon facilities is significant. North Korea is believed to have produced all its plutonium there. It also houses a centrifuge plant that produces highly enriched uranium, an alternative fuel for atomic bombs, though Western analysts suspect that the North also runs centrifuge plants elsewhere. But North Korea has frozen activities at Yongbyon before, only to restart them when negotiations with Washington stalled.

South Korean officials cautioned that Kim and Moon did not include some ideas they had discussed in the official agreements, leaving them for negotiations between the North and the United States. Moon, who is to brief Trump on Monday, sounded optimistic. So did Trump, who has been preparing for a second meeting with Kim despite the reservations of his hard-line aides.

"Based on the discussions we had here, the leaders of South Korea and the United States will be able to discuss ways of expediting denuclearization talks between the North and the United States," Chung Eui-yong, Moon's national security adviser, told South Korean reporters in Pyongyang. "We hope that a summit meeting between the North and the U.S. will take place soon."

Moon began his three-day trip to Pyongyang on Tuesday for talks aimed at advancing North-South ties and jump-starting stalled talks between Washington and Pyongyang on how to denuclearize the North.

As the 1988 Seoul Olympics helped transform South Korea from a dictatorship to a globalizing economy, South Korean officials hope one part of the agreement -- a joint bid to bring the 2032 Games to the peninsula -- would improve inter-Korean ties and encourage North Korea to open up and denuclearize.

Kim drove the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war last year when he tested ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States and Trump threatened to "totally destroy the North." But the North Korean leader embraced diplomacy early this year, suspending all nuclear and missile tests and meeting the leaders of South Korea, China and the United States.

Since then, Trump has been more supportive of Kim's overtures than many of his top foreign-policy aides, who have pushed to maintain sanctions they believe have brought North Korea to the negotiating table.

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Pennington of The Associated Press.

A Section on 09/20/2018

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