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US President Joe Biden answers a question while holding his first formal press conference as president in the East Room of the White House in Washington, United States, on March 25, 2021. REUTERS / Leah Millis
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said Thursday that the United States remained open to diplomacy with North Korea despite its missile tests this week, but warned there would be answers if North Korea made things worse.
Biden said in his first press conference at the White House that Pyongyang’s alleged ballistic missile tests violated UN resolution 1718, a 2006 measure by which the world body imposed sanctions on North Korea for nuclear and nuclear tests. missiles.
“We are consulting with our allies and partners, and there will be answers if they decide to scale. We will respond accordingly, ”Biden said.
“I am also prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be conditional on the end result of denuclearization,” he added, referring to the US effort to persuade North Korea to renounce its nuclear weapons.
Shortly after Biden’s remarks, the United States mission to the United Nations said that the North Korean sanctions committee of the UN Security Council would meet on Friday, at the request of the United States, to discuss the launches of North Korea.
The move suggested a measured response by the Biden administration to the first tests since he took office in January, as the meeting will be lower than the one that took place after North Korea last tested ballistic missiles. once a year ago.
North Korea launched two suspected ballistic missiles into the sea near Japan on Thursday, underscoring steady progress in its weapons program and increasing pressure on the Biden administration even as it reviews its North Korean policy.
The tests came just days after North Korea fired several cruise missiles in an exercise that Biden had dismissed as “business as usual.”
When asked if he agreed that North Korea was the main foreign policy problem facing him, Biden replied, “Yes.”
The Biden administration says it is in the final stages of a policy review after former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which failed to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
The current administration has been simultaneously drawing a hard line on human rights, denuclearization and sanctions, while making diplomatic proposals that, according to administration officials, have been rejected by Pyongyang.
Analysts say North Korea’s tests were likely a response to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and Blinken’s recent visit to Japan and Korea, during which he criticized North Korea’s human rights record. .
Victor Cha, a former White House official now on the think tank of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the scale of North Korea’s tests had so far been measured compared to those at the beginning of the Obama administrations. and Trump.
Cha said they could be a tactic aimed at getting concessions back to the negotiating table.
Joel Wit, a member of 38 North, a Washington-based North Korean monitoring project, said some observers had predicted that North Korea could retest ICBMs, something that hasn’t been done since 2017.
“This is far from that,” he said.
Jenny Town, director of 38 North, said that Biden’s reference to denuclearization could explain why North Korea had ignored his administration’s proposals.
She said her language ignored the principles set out in a joint statement agreed between Trump and Kim at their first summit in Singapore in 2018, “which gave equal priority to building peace, normalizing relations and working towards denuclearization. “.
“To refocus the negotiations solely on the nuclear issue is a step backwards in diplomatic terms,” he said.
Biden called Kim Jong Un a “bully” during his election campaign, and said he would only meet with him “on the condition that he agrees that he would reduce his nuclear capacity to get there.”
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