NORTH KOREA
In a press interview in the Philippines Secretary of State Michael Pompeo responded to questions concerning the reasons behind President Trump’s abruptly ending talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. According to Pompeo, Kim demanded that all sanctions against the country be immediately lifted. The sanctions were voted on and imposed by every member country of the United Nations Security Council resolution, not solely by the Trump Administration. The goal of the UN resolution is denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, something which Kim committed to in previous statements.
Pompeo labeled the talks a long , intractable, and “complex process.” President Trump was praised by former Vice President Biden for ending the current set of talks due to North Korea’s unwillingness to accept reasonable terms for denuclearization. Pompeo said the discussions will continue at a future date. Already the North Korean government has stated it wants to continue working with the United States to resolve their differences. Some criticized Kim’s statement as an attempt to draw out the process. According to a senior State Department official “We didn’t get a deal because there wasn’t a deal to be had.” US Special Representative Beigun will be holding addition meetings with North Korean government officials at a future date still to be determined.
Prior to the first meeting with Kim, President Trump warned the American public to be prepared for an extended negotiating period and that stated he was committed to finding a non-nuclear resolution to the regional destabilization caused by the Kim regime.
PHILIPPINES
In talks with President Duerte of the Philippines, Secretary Pompeo promised that the United States would continue to have the country’s back when it comes to the South China Sea. In August 1951 the two nations signed the long-standing Mutual Defense Treaty which dictated that both nations would support each other if either were attacked by a third party. Support for the Treaty has increased recently due to foreign threats and fear of China’s military actions in the area. Pompeo told reporters he was reassuring Duerte that Washington continued to stand behind the agreement.
Pompeo added that the Treaty “…lays out a very – set of specific requirements, and requirements on both countries – not just the United States to support the Philippines, but each country has its responsibility for its own security as a first and principle matter…. This history, the risk that’s presented by China’s continued encroachment to free and open navigation and the threat that it presents through the militarization of these island reefs, these rocks, is real, and I wanted President Duterte to understand that we value these shipping lanes, we value the Pacific, we value the capacity for countries to make sovereign decisions.
INDIA AND PAKISTAN
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UKRAINE
In a written statement issued by Secretary of State Pompeo, he said the “United States remains gravely concerned by the worsening repression by Russia’s occupation regime in Crimea. During the past five years, Russian occupation authorities have engaged in an array of abuses in a campaign to eliminate all opposition to its control over Crimea. As part of this campaign, Russia has arbitrarily detained and wrongfully convicted individuals for peaceful opposition to the occupation, and in some cases has forcibly transferred these individuals from occupied Crimea to Russia.
“The United States calls on Russia to release all of the Ukrainians, including members of the Crimean Tatar community, it has imprisoned in retaliation for their peaceful dissent… We call on Russia to cease all its abuses immediately, to end its occupation of Crimea, and, in the meantime, to comply with its obligations under international law, including the law of occupation.
In the Crimea Declaration of July 25, 2018, Washington reaffirmed its refusal to recognize the Kremlin’s claims of sovereignty over Crimea and condemned Russia’s illegal actions in the region. The Secretary stated that the United States will “maintain respective sanctions against Russia until the Russian government returns control of Crimea to Ukraine and fully implements the Minsk agreements.”
DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Saturday, she presents key updates on U.S. foreign policy from the State Department.
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