US envoy heads to Moscow as rumors of Putin-Kim meeting heat up

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

US envoy heads to Moscow as rumors of Putin-Kim meeting heat up

By Joshua Berlinger, CNN
Updated 0756 GMT (1556 HKT) April 17, 2019

(CNN) — The United States special representative for North Korea is headed to Moscow amid rumors in South Korean media that Kim Jong Un is planning to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin soon.

Stephen Biegun's trip appears to be the latest attempt by Washington to jumpstart high-stakes nuclear talks with Pyongyang that have seemingly been stuck in neutral since the abrupt end to a summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi.

Trump and Kim left the Vietnamese capital without a deal in part due to disagreements over trading sanctions relief for North Korea scaling back its nuclear program.

Russia has previously echoed North Korea's call for phased sanctions relief in exchange for denuclearization, while Trump has reportedly pushed for a big deal that gets that gets to the heart of North Korea's nuclear program and goes beyond Pyongyang dismantling one key facility, Yongbyon.

Rumors of a potential Putin-Kim summit also come as new analysis of satellite imagery suggests there may be renewed activity at Yongbyon.

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/17/asia/north-korea-putin-kim-intl/index.html

[soryang]

1. More scare tactics from CSIS, war industry proxy

"We just don't know," Bermudez said.

On Voice of America yesterday, even Christopher Hill at a World Forum in Seoul presentation said we need to get our inspectors into Yongbyun.

It could have already been a done deal by now in a step by step process. The US and international inspectors could have already been in there.

Instead we have to listen to scare stories from war industry proxies like CSIS every day in the media. They don't want any negotiations but then alarm everyone with the consequences. The US press dutifully repeats their war hawk messages just about every day.

Is isn't just the Russians who support a step by step approach, it's also China, South Korea and North Korea, that's 4 of the original 6 parties in the former 6 party talks.

Japan is the only East Asian power that agrees with the US approach.

The so called big deal, all or nothing approach, is the Trump/neo-con approach that rejects all prior negotiating experience with North Korea because ostensibly they know more than everyone else. It isn't really serious negotiation at all.

Tony Dalton, Director, Nuclear Policy Division, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, made a similar point to Kim Hyun Jong's about this fixation of the definition of denuclearization being an obstacle to progress on VOA's Washington Talk show, March 30. If you can't agree on a process, then you're not going to make any progress on substantive matters.

Jenny Town on the neo-cons' hardline act at Hanoi, quoted in Reuters recently:

“This is what Bolton wanted from the beginning and it clearly wasn’t going to work,” Town said. “If the U.S. was really serious about negotiations they would have learned already that this wasn’t an approach they could take.”

Town added, “It’s already been rejected more than once, and to keep bringing it up ... would be rather insulting. It’s a non-starter and reflects absolutely no learning curve in the process.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-document-exclusive/exclusive-with-a-piece-of-paper-trump-called-on-kim-to-hand-over-nuclear-weapons-idUSKCN1RA2NR