INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Pompeo characterised the meeting as a success, though critically he failed to present any new details.Tokyo: The peace process between the
United States and North Korea was in crisis Sunday after Pyongyang angrily rejected Washington's "gangster-like" demand for rapid nuclear
disarmament, despite two days of intense talks.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Tokyo to brief his Japanese and South Korean
counterparts on the talks, which he called positive, and declined to comment on Pyongyang's statement rejecting his efforts and appealing to
US President Donald Trump to revive the peace process.In a tweet, Pompeo said he had held a "constructive meeting" with his Japanese
counterpart and discussed "maintaining maximum pressure" on North Korea.He later met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who stressed that a
resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue was critical to global as well as regional stability.Speaking privately, US officials suggested
the harshly-worded North Korean statement was a negotiating tactic
But after two days of theatrical amity in Pyongyang it appeared to mark a return to the North's traditional hardline position.The North's
foreign ministry took exception to Pompeo's effort to secure concrete commitments to back leader Kim Jong Un's promise, made at a summit
last month with US President Donald Trump, to work towards the "denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".Naive and gullibleAnd it did so in
stark terms, according to a statement relayed by the KCNA state news agency."The US is fatally mistaken if it went to the extent of
regarding that the DPRK would be compelled to accept, out of its patience, demands reflecting its gangster-like mindset," the statement
said, referring to North Korea by its official initials.Pyongyang noted that it had already destroyed a nuclear test site -- a concession
that Trump has publicly hailed as a victory for peace -- and lamented that Pompeo had proved unwilling to match this with US
concessions.It dismissed Trump's unilateral order to suspend joint US and South Korean war games as a cosmetic and "highly reversible"
concession and criticised US negotiators who "never mentioned" the subject of bringing the 1953 Korean War to a formal end with a peace
treaty."We thought that the US side would come with a constructive proposal But this expectation and hope of ours was so naive as to be
gullible," KCNA said.The North Korean statement came in stark comparison to Pompeo's comments before flying to Tokyo, and appears to
represent a set-back to the process initiated between Kim and Trump last month. Pompeo characterised the meeting as a success, though
critically he failed to present any new details as to how North Korea would honour its summit commitment to "denuclearise" in exchange for
US security guarantees."These are complicated issues, but we made progress on almost all of the central issues, some places a great deal of
progress, other places there's still more work to be done," Pompeo said.Last month, Kim agreed to "work towards complete denuclearisation of
the Korean Peninsula" in return for security guarantees and an end to a dangerous stand-off with US forces. Trump hailed this as a
successful resolution of the crisis
But the short joint statement was not a detailed roadmap to disarmament and it fell to Pompeo to follow up and put meat on the bones of the
sparse commitment.'No-one walked away'"We talked about what the North Koreans are continuing to do and how it's the case that we can get our
arms around achieving what Chairman Kim and President Trump both agreed to," Pompeo said, after more than eight hours of talks over two days
with Kim Jong Un's right-hand man Kim Yong Chol."No-one walked away from that, they're still equally committed," he said, just hours before
the North issued their view of the negotiations.In practical terms, Pompeo mentioned only that officials from both sides would meet on July
12 to discuss the repatriation of the remains of some US soldiers killed during the 1950-1953 Korean War.And he said some progress had been
made towards agreeing "the modalities" of North Korea's destruction of a missile facility.Professor Yang Moo-Jin at the University of North
Korean Studies in Seoul said Pyongyang wants to separate "US bureaucrats from President Trump, expressing trust in him"."This is not to
The North is trying to get an upper hand in further negotiations," he explained."North Korea expected Pompeo to bring a concrete proposal
for security guarantee but it was disappointed as the US side reiterated the old demand that the North should denuclearise first before the
US gives it anything in return."Pompeo, who was on his third visit to Pyongyang, began the outreach when he was still Trump's CIA director
and remained the pointman on negotiations after the process became public and he became secretary of state(Except for the headline, this
story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
