Discussions should resume between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea announced on Tuesday (October 1st) Saturday talks on nuclear power with the United States, which will boost the diplomatic process eight months after the failure of the Hanoi summit.
The two sides agreed to have "preliminary contacts" on October 4 and working discussions the next day, said North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui in a statement released by the agency. official KCNA.
"I expect that the negotiations at the operational level will accelerate the positive development of relations between the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and the United States," she added, without specifying the location of the talks.
Discussions so far in neutral
US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus later confirmed that talks would be held "over the coming week". North Korea's nuclear talks have stalled since the February fiasco of US President Donald Trump's second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi.
The two men had met again in June at the border in the demilitarized zone, which separates the two states since the end of the Korean War. The brief interview culminated in the decision to restart discussions on the Pyongyang nuclear program, just over a year after the first Trump-Kim summit in Singapore.
However, these negotiations have still not resumed, the North being particularly scalded by the US refusal to cancel joint military maneuvers with Seoul this summer. Bilateral relations, however, warmed with the dismissal in early September of Donald Trump's adviser to national security, John Bolton.
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This haunted "hawk" of Pyongyang had defended on the North Korean issue a "Libyan model" that would consist of North Korea to give up all its nuclear bombs and missiles, in exchange for a lifting of sanctions.
A comparison with the "Libyan model"
This comparison with Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, later killed in an uprising sustained by NATO bombing, provoked Pyongyang's fury. And Donald Trump himself felt that this comparison had "seriously pushed back" the negotiations with North Korea.
Experts said John Bolton's dismissal may have played into the North Korean decision to dialogue. North Korea praised Donald Trump on Friday, as opposed to other Washington politicians who would be "obsessed" by the demand for unilateral North Korean denuclearization.
"I have found that President Trump is different from his predecessors in terms of political sense and determination," Kim Kye-gwan, an adviser at the North Korean Foreign Ministry, told KCNA. "I therefore wish to place my hope in the wise choices and courageous decisions of President Trump."
A vague commitment
For his part, the American president continues to praise his "friendship" with the strong North Korean man, whom he says he "trust". It is based on a vague commitment to "complete denuclearization" taken at the Singapore summit, but never followed by any concrete progress.
The "Blue House", the seat of the South Korean presidency, has welcomed the announcement of a resumption of talks between Pyongyang and Washington, hoping that they lead to "practical steps" leading to "a permanent peace regime and the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula ".
With AFP