Trump open to talks with Kim to achieve ‘fully denuclearised’ North Korea: White House

The White House said President Donald Trump remains open to engaging with Kim Jong-un to achieve a “fully denuclearised” North Korea, even as Washington imposed new sanctions and measures to block Pyongyang’s illicit revenue schemes linked to its weapons program.

Washington: US President Donald Trump remains open to engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to achieve a “fully denuclearised” North Korea, a White House official said a day after his administration announced a raft of actions to disrupt Pyongyang’s illicit revenue generation schemes.

The Trump administration unveiled a package of actions against North Korea on Thursday, including offering rewards for information about seven North Korean nationals involved in a scheme believed to raise funds for the reclusive regime’s nuclear and missile programs.

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“President Trump, in his first term, held three historic summits with North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un that stabilised the Korean Peninsula and achieved the first-ever leader-level agreement on denuclearisation,” the official told Yonhap News Agency via email.

“The president retains those objectives and remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully de-nuclearised North Korea,” the official added.

The official was responding to a question about whether Thursday’s actions against the North signalled that the Trump administration assesses diplomacy with Pyongyang to be difficult for the time being, and that it would focus on sanctions and other pressure-focused measures to bring North Korea back to dialogue, Yonhap news agency reported.

Expectations have persisted that Trump might seek to resume his personal diplomacy with Kim, which led to three in-person meetings between them – the first in Singapore in 2018, the second in Hanoi in February 2019 and the third at the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom in June 2019.

Last month, Trump said he would get “the conflict solved” with North Korea if there is one — a remark that added to the anticipation that he might want to kick-start dialogue with Kim.

On Thursday, the Trump administration took a series of steps against the North, including sanctioning a North Korean trading firm, warning that it “will not stand idly by” when Pyongyang profits from what it called criminal activities to fund its “destabilising” weapons development programs.

Those activities included a scheme to send the North’s information technology workers overseas, cryptocurrency theft, trafficking in counterfeit goods, and oil smuggling.