Thursday 18 January 2018

Two competing agendas as Trump readies for pre-emptive attack on North Korea

While the Koreas work things out themselves and decide to appear in one team for the opening of the Olympics Trump makes war.

Two competing agendas here.

Trump Readies for Pre-Emptive Attack N.KOREA



North & South Korea to form 1st joint Olympic team, march at opening together under unified flag




RT,
17 January, 2018

North and South Korea have agreed to form a unified women's hockey team for the upcoming Winter Olympics, and will march under a unified flag at the opening ceremony, according to a joint statement.

North Korea is due to send a delegation which will consist of around 550 members including 230 cheerleaders, 140 artists and 30 Taekwondo fighters, to South Korea on January 25.





View image on Twitter

talks: ‘When US is sidelined, local players find peaceful solutions’ https://on.rt.com/8wm1 


The agreement on Wednesday means this will be the first time a joint Korean sports team has been put together in 27 years, since the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships and FIFA World Youth Championship, and the first ever in Olympics history.

Athletes from both Koreas marched together at international sports events about nine times so far,” South Korean Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Do Jong-whan said on Monday, as quoted by the Chosun Ilbo. “Peace on the Korean Peninsula through sports is a value that the Olympics are pursuing.”

Despite the agreement between Pyongyang and Seoul, the final decision about the team rests with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which will hold a meeting on in Switzerland on Saturday to discuss the possible joint Korean team and other matters relating to North Korea.

In his New Year’s address, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he was considering sending an athletic delegation to the Pyeongchang Olympics, while a few days later, a border hotline operating across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) resumed operation for the first time in two years.


As a result of the easing of tensions, the first intra-Korean peace talks in two years kicked off between officials in the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone earlier in January. The two Koreas remain technically at war despite the de-facto end of hostilities in 1953.




Trump says Russia helping North Korea skirt sanctions; Pyongyang getting close on missile


17 January, 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday Russia is helping North Korea evade international sanctions and that Pyongyang is getting “closer every day” to being able to deliver a long-range missile to the United States.


Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump said during an Oval Office interview with Reuters. “What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.”

China and Russia both signed onto the latest rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea imposed last year. There was no immediate comment from the Russian embassy in Washington on Trump’s remarks.

During a 53-minute interview with a fresh Diet Coke near at hand on his desk, Trump also said he was considering a big “fine” as part of an investigation into China’s alleged theft of intellectual property; that he has lost all trust in the chief Democratic Party negotiator on immigration in the Senate; and declined to clear up conflicting reports about his use of the phrase “shithole countries” in a White House meeting, which caused an international outcry.

With North Korea persisting as the major global challenge facing Trump this year, the president cast doubt on whether talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be useful. In the past he has not ruled out direct talks with Kim.

I’d sit down, but I‘m not sure that sitting down will solve the problem,” he said, noting that past negotiations with the North Koreans by his predecessors had failed to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

He blamed his three immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, for failing to resolve the crisis and, a day after his doctor gave him a perfect score on a cognitive test, suggested he had the mental acuity to solve it.

I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,” he said.

He declined to comment when asked whether he had engaged in any communications at all with Kim, with whom he has exchanged public insults and threats, heightening tensions in the region.

Trump said he hoped the standoff with Pyongyang could be resolved “in a peaceful way, but it’s very possible that it can’t.”

Trump praised China for its efforts to restrict oil and coal supplies to North Korea but said Beijing could do much more to help constrain Pyongyang.


The White House last week welcomed news that imports to China from North Korea, which counts on Beijing as its main economic partner, plunged in December to their lowest in dollar terms since at least the start of 2014.


Very possible’ that N. Korea crisis can’t be resolved peacefully – Trump



RT,
17 January, 2018


It's “very possible” that the standoff with North Korea might not be resolved peacefully, Donald Trump said in an exclusive interview with Reuters, adding, that he is not sure if the talks will lead to “anything meaningful.”
I’d sit down, but I‘m not sure that sitting down will solve the problem,” Trump said.

He added that he is basically “not sure that talks will lead to anything meaningful” since they have been going on for 25 years now.

The remarks come after Trump’s statement earlier in January, in which he said he is “absolutely” willing to talk on the phone to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un if certain conditions are met.

Tensions with Pyongyang have risen since Trump came to power in January last year, with many threats, incendiary rhetoric and provocative military maneuvers exhanged by both sides.

During the interview, the US leader also had some harsh words for Russia with regards to the situation on the Korean peninsula. Trump accused Moscow of being soft on Pyongyang and not doing enough to implement international sanctions.

While supporting the UN Security Council sanctions on Pyongyang, Moscow has repeatedly insisted that the US itself should take a more moderate approach towards North Korea and follow the diplomatic route.

Trump and Kim have repeatedly threatened one another with an armed strike, with the US commander in chief once tweeting that his nuclear button was “much bigger & more powerful one than his [Kim's], and my Button works!”


Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump told Reuters that he still wasn’t ruling out military action. “We’re playing a very, very hard game of poker and you don’t want to reveal your hand,” he said.

Meanwhile, Russia's foreign ministry criticized the joint US-Canadian summit trying to resolve the the N.Korean question. Moscow said the nations present failed to provide any alternatives to the joint Russian-Chinese “double-freeze” strategy, in which Pyongyang and the US respectively cease their missile program and military maneuvers. Neither Russia nor China were invited to the summit, where Washington again rejected the double-freeze solution.

US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday that it's Washington’s aggressive foreign policy – agitating for regime change around the world – that's lead to the tense situation with North Korea.

Regime change war policy is the reason why North Korea sees nuclear weapons as their only deterrent from a US-led attack,” she tweeted. “Kim Jong-un sees what the US has done to Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the effort underway to decertify the nuclear deal with Iran,” the Democratic representative from Hawaii said.

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