North Korea 'willing to denuclearise', Moon says

This September 10, 2018 picture released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 11, 2018 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) and his wife Ri Sol-Ju (R) leading China’s Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Li Zhanshu (L) at the Mansudae Art Theatre in Pyongyang prior to an art performance and a banquet for the Chinese party and government delegation.


North Korea is “willing to denuclearise” and the US is prepared to end hostile relations, President Moon Jae-in said Thursday as he struck an upbeat tone ahead of his third meeting with Kim Jong Un next week.
The summit will be the third between the leaders of North and South Korea this year and comes as talks between Washington and Pyongyang over dismantling the North’s nuclear arsenal have stalled.

Moon conceded there was a “blockage” and both sides needed to compromise to make progress on the controversial subject.

“North Korea is willing to denuclearise and therefore willing to discard existing nuclear weapons… and the US is willing to end hostile relations with the North and provide security guarantees,” Moon said.

“But there is a blockage as both sides are demanding each other to act first and I think they will be able to find a point of compromise.”

Moon, who helped broker the June summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump and has called for a follow-up meeting between the two sides, added South Korea would help mediate contacts between Washington and Pyongyang to “speed up the denuclearisation process”.

Trump and Kim Jong Un pledged to denuclearise the Korean peninsula at their historic Singapore meeting.

However, no details were agreed, and Washington and Pyongyang have sparred since over what that means and how it will be achieved. Last month, Trump abruptly cancelled a planned visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang.

The new US envoy for the North, Stephen Biegun, said in August Kim had promised “final, fully verified denuclearisation” at the Singapore summit.

But Pyongyang has slammed Washington for its “gangster-like” demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said Thursday that making progress on denuclearisation talks with North Korea is a “daily concern”.

“Getting traction on the denuclearisation and peace process that is very much now in motion — it’s a daily concern to get movement on this,” she told a regional economic forum in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.

Speaking on the sidelines of the forum, Kang called for “openness” from the North about their weapons programme and added a second Trump-Kim summit should deliver “concrete” results.

“A second summit has to be something that really significantly moves the agenda forward,” she added.

The White House said earlier this week Trump had received a “very positive” letter from Kim seeking a follow-up meeting, since adding it is in the process of coordinating a possible second meeting between the two leaders.

South Korean national security advisor Chung Eui-yong said Thursday Moon and Kim will discuss “more in-depth and detailed ways to achieve denuclearisation”.

The two Koreas will be holding a closed working-level meeting on Friday to discuss the logistics of next week’s summit, an official at the South’s presidential office said.

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Putin Proposes Peace Deal Between Russia And Japan

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 12, 2018. 

President Vladimir Putin suggested Wednesday Russia and Japan sign a peace deal “without any preconditions” by the end of the year, a historic proposal to try to solve a territorial dispute after decades of deadlock.

Putin’s sudden proposal came just two days after he said that the two countries’ territorial dispute was unlikely to be settled soon.

The dispute between Russia and Japan centers on the four southernmost islands in the Kuril chain which the Soviet Union occupied at the end of World War II in 1945 but are claimed by Japan.

It has kept the two countries from signing a peace accord.

“We have been trying to solve the territorial dispute for 70 years. We’ve been holding talks for 70 years,” Putin said at an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok attended by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

“Shinzo said: ‘let’s change our approaches.’ Let’s! Let’s conclude a peace agreement, not now but by year’s end without any preconditions,” Putin said, with the audience breaking into applause.

“It is not a joke,” Putin added, suggesting the two countries commit to solving the territorial dispute in the text of the agreement.

Putin said the conclusion of such a deal would create a better atmosphere and allow the two countries to “continue to solve all outstanding issues like friends.”

“It seems to me that this would facilitate the solution of all problems which we have not been able to solve during the past 70 years.”

The Japanese prime minister for his part said the two countries “have a duty to future generations.”

“Let us walk together mindful of the questions ‘If we don’t do it now, then when?’ And ‘if we don’t do it, then who will?'” Abe said, speaking before Putin. “We are both fully aware that it will not be easy.”

On Monday, Putin had seemed to pour cold water on suggestions that the dispute could be solved soon.

“It would be naive to think that it can be solved quickly,” Putin said after meeting Abe on the sidelines of the forum.

But some diplomats said the proposal was a non-starter.

A former Russian deputy foreign minister, Georgy Kunadze, said he doubted that Putin wanted to solve the territorial problem in earnest.

“This is called trolling. Putin does not expect anything,” Kunadze told Echo of Moscow radio station.

He suggested Abe would never accept a deal that would be political suicide.

Putin and Abe have held numerous meetings over the past few years in a bid to solve the dispute over the islands known in Japan as the Northern Territories.

The two countries have launched various economic projects on the islands in areas such as the farming of fish and shellfish, wind-generated energy, and tourism.

Since last year, Tokyo and Moscow have also agreed on charter flights for Japanese former island inhabitants to visit family graves there.

Russian and Japanese foreign ministry officials said work on the future agreement would continue as usual.

“The government will continue its negotiations on the basic principle that we will sign a peace treaty after resolving the issue of the attribution of the Four Northern Islands,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

“This stance hasn’t changed.”

In Moscow, deputy foreign minister Igor Morgulov told Russian news agencies that Putin’s announcement would not require any changes to the current format of negotiations.

The Kurils, which lie north of Japan’s Hokkaido island, have been controlled by Moscow since they were seized by Soviet troops in the dying days of World War II.

The four islands are known in Russian as Iturup, Shikotan, Habomai, and Kunashir.

Putin’s predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev visited Kunashir in 2010, becoming the first Russian leader to do so and provoking fury in Tokyo.

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Buhari Submits APC Presidential Forms, Warns Party Members Against Complacency

He submitted the expression of interest and nomination forms on Wednesday at the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Secretariat at Blantyre Street, Wuse II, Abuja.

The national chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomole among other leaders of the party were at the Secretariat to receive the forms from President Buhari.

President Buhari while submitting the forms warned party members against complacency but to prepare for the party to win the forthcoming 2019 elections.

“Let me today appeal to party members not to be complacent but to prepare, strategise and win in 2019 elections. We must not allow those who brought the country to its knees from 1999 to 2015 to come back and take us back,” he said.














Security officials including operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) and the police officers from the Presidential Villa were also at the secretariat to beef up security.

President Buhari earlier on Tuesday received the APC expression of interest and nomination forms bought for him and presented to him by members of a group called National Consolidation Ambassadors Network (NCAN) at the presidential villa.

Buhari while receiving the form spoke concerning the achievements of his administration.

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