BANGKOK—Brushing aside repeated entreaties from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a meeting, North Korea was a no-show this week at a diplomatic forum in Bangkok.
The snub didn’t deter
Pompeo from holding out hope that Pyongyang soon will come back to the table
and resume denuclearization talks.
From the get-go, North Korea loomed large over the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum. Not helping matters, North Korea test-fired short-range ballistic missiles three times in the past week, casting further doubts on U.S.-led efforts to denuclearize the reclusive communist regime and de-escalate military tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Nevertheless, going into
the forum Thursday, Pompeo said he and U.S. Special Representative for North
Korea Stephen Biegun, also in Bangkok this week, were both ready to resume
talks with Pyongyang.
“We stand ready to continue
our diplomatic conversation with the North Koreans,” Pompeo told reporters at a
joint news conference Thursday with Thailand’s foreign minister. “I regret that
it looks like I’m not going to have the opportunity to do that while I’m here
in Bangkok, but we’re ready to go.”
Pompeo’s arrival in Asia on
Wednesday was met by news of a North Korean missile test—coming just days after
Pyongyang tested two KN-23
missiles. Then on Friday, despite Pompeo’s calls for a
meeting in Bangkok, North Korea conducted another missile test—its third in one
week.
“The diplomatic path is
often fraught with bumps,” Pompeo said during a speech Friday, adding that
behind-the-scenes communications were ongoing between the U.S. and North Korea.
“Lots of conversations are
taking place,” Pompeo said, adding that diplomacy is “the right approach.”
Olive Branch
While not a member of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum, the U.S. is a strategic
partner to the 10-nation bloc and part of the East Asian Summit, which includes
the core ASEAN countries along with eight others, among them China and Russia.
In the past, North Korean
officials have attended the ASEAN Regional Forum, too. This week, however,
Pyongyang sat out the event.
Yet the secretary of state tried to salvage the opportunity to renew dialogue, making clear he was willing to talk.
“We don’t anticipate that
the North Koreans will be at the event in Bangkok, but if they are, I’d look
forward to the chance to meet with Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho,” Pompeo told
reporters Tuesday en route to Bangkok. “We’ll see if they are there, and if
they are there, I am confident we’ll meet.”
Pompeo met Thursday with
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The two “reaffirmed their commitment to the
complete denuclearization of North Korea and the need for North Korea to return
to negotiations,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus wrote in an
emailed statement.
China’s special
representative for North Korea was not in Bangkok for the week’s summit,
although Biegun spoke to his Chinese counterpart by phone, officials said.
Despite a laundry list of disputes with China, U.S. officials say that
denuclearizing North Korea remains one issue on which the two countries see eye
to eye.
“There
is one area that is clearly an exceptional case of cooperation between the
United States and China, and that’s North Korea,” a senior State Department
official told reporters Friday in Bangkok.
False
Start
President Donald Trump and
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un first met in Singapore in 2018, launching an
American-led diplomatic effort to get North Korea to give up its nuclear
weapons.
A follow-up summit between
Trump and Kim in Hanoi in February broke down and sent both sides back to their
corners. Talks stalled until Trump and Kim met during a hastily arranged trip
to Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border in June.
That meeting sparked hopes of renewed talks and a resumption of North Korea’s progress toward denuclearization. But months later little, if any, progress has been made.
One State Department
official called North Korea’s missile launches this week a “huge mistake” and
“self-inflicted damage.” In fact, the launches seemingly served to unite nations
attending the ASEAN Regional Forum to maintain pressure on Pyongyang.
“Not just with countries like Japan and South
Korea, who are long-standing allies of the United States, but even in
discussions with the Chinese and with the Russians,” the official said. “It’s
clear that there’s strong alignment.”
U.S. officials also
downplayed an ongoing trade feud between Japan and South Korea, saying it had
no effect on the two countries’ security cooperation with the U.S. on North
Korea.
“With Japan and South Korea, in fact, cooperation on North Korea is uninterrupted and has been unaffected by tensions in other parts of their relationship—demonstrating that both countries, when they see their national interests coinciding, are still capable of working together,” a senior State Department official told reporters Friday in Bangkok.
State Department officials
say Trump remains committed to diplomacy and is hoping for a breakthrough with
North Korea soon. Yet the U.S. is playing the long game, those officials say,
looking for a realistic pathway to denuclearization and a durable de-escalation
of hostilities—not just a short-term win.
“We’re not in a hurry to
get a bad deal,” a senior State Department official said.
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