3 key agenda items at closely watched Korea summit talks
Updated 6:50 pm, Thursday, April 26, 2018
GOYANG, South Korea (AP) — Friday's summit between the leaders of the rival Koreas won't be entirely focused on North Korea's nuclear weapons, though they will certainly top the agenda after the recent rapid progress North Korea has made. The meeting is a rare opportunity for the two men to discuss other thorny issues at the highest level.
Here's a look at the expected agenda between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
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DENUCLEARIZATION
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North Korea will suspend nuclear and missile tests immediately and abolish a nuclear test site in the northern part of the country in a bid to pursue economic growth and peace on the Korean peninsula. The decision comes amid decreasing tensions on the Korean Peninsula ahead of a summit between the North and the South next week. North Korea leader Kim Jong Un said in a statement his country no longer needs to conduct nuclear tests or intercontinental ballistic missile tests because it has completed weaponizing nuclear arms, said the Korean Central News Agency. Kim said that to create an "international environment favorable" for its economy, it would facilitate close contact and active dialogue" with neighboring countries and the international community. It marked the first time North Korea directly addressed its nuclear weapons programmes, ahead the planned summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in next week and a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in late May or early June. Mr Trump has welcomed the news and said he looked forward to a summit with Kim: The northern nuclear test ground of the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) will be dismantled to transparently guarantee the discontinuance of the nuclear test," Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said after Kim convened this year's first plenary session of the Central Committee of the ruling Worker's Party on Friday. Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said it was not the time to ease pressure on North Korea. Japan has advocated a policy of maximum pressure to get the reclusive state to abandon its weapons programme. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who came back from his visit to Washington for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump also cautiously welcomed the move as a "forward motion" but said it must lead to verifiable denuclearisation. South Korea's presidential office said the decision is a "meaningful progress" for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. "It will also contribute to creating a very positive environment for the success of the upcoming South-North summit and North-United States summit," a spokesman for the president's office, Yoon Young-chan, said in a statement. North Korea has defended its nuclear and missile programmes as necessary deterrents against perceived U.S. hostility. It has conducted numerous missile tests, and last year it detonated its most powerful nuclear bomb. The tests and escalating rhetoric between Trump and Kim raised fears of war until, in a New Year's speech, the North Korean leader called for reduced military tensions and improved ties with South Korea and sent a delegation to the Winter Olympics in the South in February.
Media: EuronewsThe success of the summit largely depends on negotiations centered on the North's commitment to nuclear disarmament.
North Korea has previously argued that it can disarm only when the United States withdraws its 28,500 troops from South Korea and allows an inspection of U.S. military bases in the South that North Korea alleges hide nuclear weapons.
Despite skepticism about Kim's sincerity, this is the first time he has offered to negotiate over his nuclear weapons since taking office in late 2011. Moon says Kim this time has not specifically demanded the pullout of the U.S. soldiers in South Korea as a condition for his country's disarmament.
Kim plans to have a separate summit meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in May or early June.
Some analysts say Kim and Moon could end up agreeing on "a comprehensive, complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" so they could keep up momentum for dialogue until the more important Kim-Trump talks.
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PERMANENT PEACE
The Korean Peninsula is one of the most volatile areas on Earth, with hundreds of thousands of combat-ready soldiers from the two Koreas deployed along the mine-strewn border. That's largely because the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War has yet to be replaced with a peace treaty.
Moon recently said the two Koreas should formally agree to stop the war and sign a peace treaty, days after Trump gave his "blessing" for them to discuss an end of the war.
But South Korea wasn't a signatory to the 1953 cease-fire arranged by North Korea and China on one hand and the American-led U.N. Command on the other. Still, the two Korean leaders can discuss the topic.
North Korea has long sought a peace treaty with the United States. It says it needs nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls U.S. military threats. The signing of a peace treaty could eventually lead to North Korea and the U.S. establishing diplomatic relations and opening embassies in each other's capitals, but analysts say it could also provide the North with grounds to call for the withdrawal of the U.S. troops in South Korea.
After their second summit in 2007, the Koreas agreed to pursue peace and end their standoff, but they failed to forge a genuine detente because of the North's nuclear program.
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IMPROVING TIES
The two leaders will also likely discuss how to mend ties strained during nearly a decade of conservative rule in South Korea before Moon took office last May.
All cooperation projects initiated after the two previous summits, in 2000 and 2007, were stalled as two back-to-back South Korean conservative presidents took a harder line on North Korea's advancing nuclear program. The North churned out near-daily crude insults of South Korean leaders, calling them a "rat" and a "prostitute."
Moon and Kim have already taken a series of steps to cooperate ahead of Friday's summit. They let their athletes parade together to open February's Winter Olympics in South Korea and fielded a single Olympic team in women's hockey. After the games, a group of South Korean pop singers flew to North Korea, where they performed and shook hands with Kim.
Moon will likely propose resuming reunions of families separated by the Korean War as an urgent humanitarian issue for elderly people who are desperate to reunite with their loved ones before they die.
Restarting a jointly run factory park in the North Korean border city of Kaesong appears difficult because it could violate U.N. sanctions against North Korea. But experts say a major breakthrough in the North Korean nuclear issue in the Kim-Trump talks could raise prospects for the resumption of some cooperative projects.