Trump rules out negotiating with North Korea, contradicting his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Trump says North Korea talks are ‘waste of time’ President contradicts Tillerson’s statement that lines of communication are open Ft.com by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington, 2 Oct 17 Donald Trump dismissed the prospect of talks with Pyongyang as pointless barely a day after his secretary of state said the US was using new channels of communication to weigh the possibility of negotiations with North Korea about its nuclear programme. “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Mr Trump tweeted on Sunday morning. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”.

In a second tweet later in the day, he added: “Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.”

The US president’s interventions came after Mr Tillerson told reporters during a visit to China that Washington had three direct channels of communication with North Korea……..

Richard Haass, president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, slammed Mr Trump for undercutting his secretary of state. “Potus truly misguided here-& SecState should resign,” he tweeted on Sunday. Ian Bremmer, head of Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy, said the president’s comments were the “stupidest tweet on national security I’ve ever seen from a sitting head of state”………

After Mr Trump used a speech at the UN to describe Mr Kim as “Rocket Man . . . on a suicide mission” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, Mr Kim responded by calling the US president a “mentally deranged dotard” while his foreign minister said Pyongyang would consider detonating a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean…….

To send a strong signal to Mr Kim, the US has been conducting increasingly frequent high-profile exercises around the Korean peninsula, sometimes with Japan and South Korea. Last weekend, US warplanes flew farther north from the demilitarised zone — that separates South and North Korea — than at any point in the 21st century. In combination with the military warnings, Washington is leading a global campaign to ratchet up economic pressure on North Korea in an effort to squeeze the regime, cut off funding for weapons programmes, and force Pyongyang to the negotiating table. The UN has recently imposed two sets of harsh sanctions that — combined with previous measures — embargo 90 per cent of North Korean exports. The US has also imposed unilateral sanctions and has punished Chinese and Russian companies that have been accused of facilitating weapons development in North Korea.https://www.ft.com/content/cd2087a0-a5f1-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97 Follow Demetri Sevastopulo on Twitter: @dimi

October 2, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, politics international, USA

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