by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US State Department on Friday said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Japanese counterpart discussed the next-step engagement with North Korea over phone.
Pompeo and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono on Thursday reaffirmed their shared commitment to the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea, the State Department said in a statement, reports Xinhua.
The two also committed to strengthening trilateral cooperation with the Republic of Korea on a unified approach toward North Korea, according to the statement.
The phone call between the two allies’ top diplomats came one day after US President Donald Trump’s call with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The White House said Wednesday that the two leaders committed to coordinating closely in advance of the US-North Korea upcoming Hanoi summit.
Trump announced on February 8 that his second meeting with North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong Un would take place in Hanoi of Vietnam on February 27-28.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business Summit, Events, Social Round-up, World
Washington : US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will spend some time one-on-one next week at their second summit in Vietnam, White House officials said on Thursday.
The summit, scheduled for February 27-28 in Hanoi, will “be similar in format to what you saw last June 12 in Singapore,” an official said in a conference call with reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“There will be an opportunity for the two leaders to see one another one-on-one, to share a meal and engage in expanded meetings of their respective delegations,” the official said, reports Efe.
The White House has not made Trump’s agenda public yet and the source did not specify whether the private meeting — accompanied only by their respective interpreters — would occur at the beginning of the summit, as was the case in Singapore.
In Singapore, the leaders spoke privately for 38 minutes before the formal talks between the full delegations, sparking speculation about the content of Trump’s conversation with Kim.
The joint statement that emerged from the Singapore talks said that North Korea pledged to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” in exchange for unspecified security guarantees from the US.
One goal for next week’s encounter is reaching agreement on a “shared definition” of what denuclearisation means in concrete terms, the US official said.
Trump has also talked lately about North Korea’s economic potential and its advantageous location between Russia and China, so he is expected to expand further on that issue when he sees Kim, according to Efe.
“President Trump is looking to — after really, in some respects, breaking the ice with Kim in June — to talk in more depth about the kind of future that North Korea could enjoy if it follows through on its commitment to final and full denuclearisation,” one of the officials said.
One of the White House officials acknowledged that Pyongyang’s intention remains a mystery.
“I don’t know if North Korea has made the choice yet to denuclearise, but the reason why we’re engaged in this is because we believe there’s a possibility that North Korea can make the choice to fully denuclearize,” the official said.
“And that’s why the president has assigned such a priority to engaging with them,” the official added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business Summit, Events, Social Round-up, World
Washington : President Donald Trump on Wednesday had a phone conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about the upcoming summit between the US and the North Korea, the White House said.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that Trump and Abe in their phone call reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the final, fully verified denuclearisation of the North Korea and discussed the upcoming Hanoi summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un, top North Korea leader, at the end of this month.
Trump and Abe committed to coordinating closely in advance of the US-North Korea talks, according to the statement, reports Xinhua news agency.
“We firmly and closely coordinated our policies in the run-up to the second US-North Korea summit to resolve nuclear, missile and abduction issues,” Abe said after the phone talks with Trump.
Trump announced on February 8 that his second meeting with Kim would take place in Hanoi of Vietnam on February 27-28.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : A federal judge in Washington ordered North Korea to pay $501 million to the parents of Otto Warmbier, holding the country accountable for the “barbaric mistreatment” and death of the University of Virginia student in 2017.
Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Monday that North Korea should pay damages to Fred and Cindy Warmbier, the parents of the student who died shortly after being released from a North Korean prison.
Warmbier was visiting North Korea with a tour group when he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in March 2016 on suspicion of stealing a propaganda poster. He died in June 2017, shortly after he returned to the US in a coma and showing apparent signs of torture while in custody.
Warmbier’s parents had filed a wrongful death suit against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in April and appeared in court last week for the first hearing.
They sued the North Korean government for more than $1 billion, saying they were seeking “closure” and wanted to “obtain justice for the severe injuries” they say their son and family suffered.
Howell found North Korea liable for “the torture, hostage taking and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier” as well as the injuries to his parents.
“An American family, the Warmbiers, experienced North Korea’s brutality first-hand when North Korea seized their son to use as a pawn in that totalitarian state’s global shenanigans and face-off with the US,” the judge said.
Howell demanded from North Korea $450 million in punitive damages as well as $51 million for the personal anguish and economic loss both Warmbier and his parents experienced, the Washington Post reported.
The ruling, however, was mainly symbolic as North Korea was unlikely to pay the damages.
Before Warmbier went on what was intended to be a short visit to North Korea with a tour group, Howell said: “he was a healthy, athletic student of economics and business in his junior year at the University of Virginia, with ‘big dreams’ and both the smarts and people skills to make him his high school class salutatorian, homecoming king and prom king.
“… He was blind, deaf, and brain dead when North Korea turned him over to US government officials for his final trip home.”
In a statement, Warmbier’s parents thanked Howell and called the decision a “significant step on our journey”.
“We are thankful that the US has a fair and open judicial system so that the world can see that the Kim regime is legally and morally responsible for Otto’s death. We put ourselves and our family through the ordeal of a lawsuit and public trial because we promised Otto that we will never rest until we have justice for him,” the couple said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World

US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert
Washington : The US has said that North Korea should denuclearise before Washington signs a war-ending declaration with Pyongyang.
In a press briefing on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency quoted State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert as saying: “We believe that denuclearization has to take place before we get to other parts.”
US media had reported earlier that the signing of a joint declaration to formally end the Korean War was one of the verbal agreements between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un when they met on June 12 in Singapore.
But besides the pace and scale of denuclearization, Washington and Pyongyang have disagreed on whether to issue a war-ending declaration.
North Korea has argued that such a document is the first step towards peace on the peninsula, whereas US has said it is too early to discuss the topic.
At the conclusion of the historic Trump-Kim summit, the two sides issued a joint statement in which they agreed to improve bilateral relations and work together to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the peninsula.
—IANS