08-12-2017, 12:00 AM
Fom todays Guardian news website
Despite gung-ho language from the US president, there was no change in US deployments in the region or a change in the alert status of US forces. And it was reported on Friday that the Trump administration had reopened a channel of communication between US and North Korean diplomats at the UN.
According to the Associated Press, the “New York channel” had been broken off by North Korea in protest against sanctions in 2016, but it was revived this year between Joseph Yun, the US envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song-il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s UN mission.
The US state department said it had no comment on the report. It had previously been reported that there had been diplomatic contacts about US detainees in North Korea, but the new AP account said the talks addressed wider issues, although such contacts had so far failed to moderate the exchange of threats between the leaders of the two countries.
Asked about the report on Friday, Trump said: “Well, we don’t want to talk about progress, we don’t want to talk about backchannels.
“We want to talk about a country that has misbehaved for many many years – decades, actually – through numerous administrations, and they didn’t want to take on the issue and I had no choice but to take it on, and I’m taking it on. And we’ll either be very, very successful quickly or we’re going to be very, very successful in a different way, quickly.”
Last sentence not very nice to read.
Despite gung-ho language from the US president, there was no change in US deployments in the region or a change in the alert status of US forces. And it was reported on Friday that the Trump administration had reopened a channel of communication between US and North Korean diplomats at the UN.
According to the Associated Press, the “New York channel” had been broken off by North Korea in protest against sanctions in 2016, but it was revived this year between Joseph Yun, the US envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song-il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s UN mission.
The US state department said it had no comment on the report. It had previously been reported that there had been diplomatic contacts about US detainees in North Korea, but the new AP account said the talks addressed wider issues, although such contacts had so far failed to moderate the exchange of threats between the leaders of the two countries.
Asked about the report on Friday, Trump said: “Well, we don’t want to talk about progress, we don’t want to talk about backchannels.
“We want to talk about a country that has misbehaved for many many years – decades, actually – through numerous administrations, and they didn’t want to take on the issue and I had no choice but to take it on, and I’m taking it on. And we’ll either be very, very successful quickly or we’re going to be very, very successful in a different way, quickly.”
Last sentence not very nice to read.