US Defense Secretary: Washington Has No Plans to Suspend More Military Exercises with Seoul

TEHRAN (Defapress)- Mattis said on Tuesday the United States had postponed some major exercises earlier as a good-faith gesture for negotiations with North Korea while others had continued, World News reported.

“We took the step to suspend several of the largest exercises as a good-faith measure coming out of the Singapore summit,” Mattis told reporters, referring to the June summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises,” the top US diplomat said, adding that no decisions had yet been made on major exercises for next year.

After the historic summit, Trump said that the United States would stop “very provocative” and expensive military exercises with South Korea to facilitate denuclearization negotiations with Pyongyang.

The United States and South Korea hold regular military drills to the fury of North Korea, which has long seen the drills as preparations to invade it. US and South Korean forces regularly rehearse everything from beach landings to an invasion from the North, or even "decapitation" military strikes targeting the North Korean government. Following maneuvers last year, North Korea condemned the drills and fired ballistic missiles over Japan. North Korea has long demanded US troops be removed from the Korean peninsula as part of a nuclear deal, but the US has been at pains to stress the issue is not a bargaining chip. The US has about 28,500 service members stationed in South Korea.

North Korean officials warned in a letter to the United States that denuclearization talks were “again at stake and may fall apart”, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The letter was delivered directly to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and stated that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s government felt that the process could not move forward.

"The US is still not ready to meet (North Korean) expectations in terms of taking a step forward to sign a peace treaty," CNN reported, citing sources.

US President Donald Trump on Friday asked his top diplomat to call off a trip to North Korea "at this time", citing insufficient progress on denuclearisation.

"I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to not go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula," Trump tweeted.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that Trump called off the visit to North Korea by Pompeo after the latter received a belligerent letter from a senior North Korean official just hours after the trip was announced last week.

CNN reported that the letter was sent by the former head of North Korea’s spy agency, Kim Yong Chol, but it was not known how it was sent. The Washington Post reported that North Korea had been increasingly communicating through its UN mission.

CNN reported that the letter also mentioned that if a compromise could not be reached and the nascent talks crumbles, North Korea could resume “nuclear and missile activities”.

The Washington Post reported that the exact contents of the message were unclear, but it was sufficiently belligerent that Trump and Pompeo decided to call off the planned trip.

On Sunday, North Korea's state newspaper Rodong Sinmun blamed the Washington of "double-dealing" and "hatching a criminal plot" against Pyongyang, after the US secretary of state's visit was postponed.

After more a year of escalating tensions defined by nuclear and missile tests, new sanctions and "fire and fury" rhetoric, Trump made history meeting Kim earlier this year.

In the run-up to the summit, both nations engaged in hard-nosed negotiation, with Trump publicly calling off the meeting in an effort to push Kim to agree to nuclear concessions. During the summit, the pair signed a vague joint statement in which the North agreed to denuclearise, but which left nearly all details undefined. But negotiations have stalled since the June summit in Singapore. The United States is pressing for tangible steps towards North Korea’s abandonment of its nuclear arsenal while Pyongyang is demanding that Washington first make concessions of its own.

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