People watch a television broadcast showing a file image of a North Korean missile launch on the Seoul Railway Station on October 28, 2022 in Seoul, South Korea. North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) toward the East Sea on Friday, the South Korean military said, as Seoul’s major military exercise drew to an in depth.
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The US said on Friday its policy towards North Korea had not modified after a senior U.S. official chargeable for nuclear policy raised some eyebrows by saying Washington can be willing to have interaction in arms-control talks with Pyongyang.
Some experts argue that recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, something Pyongyang seeks, is a prerequisite for such talks. But Washington has long argued that the North Korean nuclear program is against the law and subject to United Nations sanctions.
Bonnie Jenkins, State Department under secretary for arms control, was asked at a Washington nuclear conference on Thursday at which point North Korea needs to be treated as an arms-control problem.
“In the event that they would have a conversation with us … arms control can at all times be an option if you could have two willing countries willing to sit down down on the table and talk,” she replied.
“And never just arms control, but risk reduction – every part that leads as much as a conventional arms-control treaty and all the several points of arms control that we are able to have with them. We have made it very clear to the DPRK … that we’re able to refer to them – we’ve no pre-conditions,” she said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name.
Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, she added: “If he picked up the phone and said, ‘I need to speak about arms control,’ we’re not going to say no. I believe, if anything, we’d wish to explore what meaning.”
The US and its allies are concerned that North Korea could also be about to resume nuclear bomb testing for the primary time since 2017, something that will be highly unwelcome to the Biden administration ahead of mid-term elections early next month. North Korea has rejected U.S. calls to return to talks.
Asked about Jenkins’ comment, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said: “I need to be very clear about this. There was no change to U.S. policy.”
Price said U.S. policy remained “the entire denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” while adding, “we proceed to be open to diplomacy with the DPRK, we proceed to succeed in out to the DPRK, we’re committed to pursuing a diplomatic approach. We’re prepared to satisfy without preconditions and we call on the DPRK to have interaction in serious and sustained diplomacy.”
‘Kim Jong Un’s trap’
Speaking on Friday at the identical nuclear policy conference Jenkins addressed, Alexandra Bell, one other senior State Department arms-control official, also stressed there was no change in U.S. policy.
Asked if it was time to simply accept North Korea as a nuclear state, she replied: “Wording aside, we’re committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We don’t accept North Korea with that status. But we’re enthusiastic about having a conversation with the North Koreans.”
Daniel Russel, the highest U.S. diplomat for East Asia under then-President Barack Obama and now with the Asia Society, told Reuters Jenkins had “fallen straight into Kim Jong Un’s trap” along with her remarks.
“Suggesting that North Korea only has to conform to have a conversation with the U.S. about arms control and risk reduction is a terrible mistake, since it moves the difficulty from North Korea’s right to own nuclear weapons to the query of what number of it must have and the way they’re used,” he said.
“Kim would love nothing higher than to push his risk reduction agenda — the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea.”
Other experts played down Jenkins’ remarks.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association, said she was not making a press release recognizing North Korea as a nuclear weapons state under the international Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“She was acknowledging, as other officials in other administrations have, that North Korea does have nuclear weapons, but in violation of its commitments under the NPT to not pursue nuclear weapons,” he told Reuters.
Kimball and Toby Dalton, a nuclear expert on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which hosted the nuclear conference, said they didn’t see formal recognition as a nuclear-armed state as a prerequisite for arms-control talks. Dalton said Jenkins appeared essentially to be restating the U.S. position that it was willing to refer to Pyongyang without preconditions.