SEOUL/WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday hailed “significant progress” in talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the weekend and said the sides were “pretty close” to agreeing details for a second summit between Kim and President Donald Trump.
However, experts questioned what Pompeo had achieved on Sunday on his fourth visit to Pyongyang this year. They said the North Korean leader appeared simply to be repackaging and dragging out past pledges.
Pompeo told reporters Kim had said he was ready to allow international inspectors into North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear testing site and the Sohae missile engine test facility as soon as the two sides agreed on logistics.
However, Pompeo declined to say whether there had been any movement on North Korea allowing inspectors to visit its Yongbyon site, which produces fuel for nuclear weapons, as the US has sought. North Korea has said it could permanently close Yongbyon if Washington took “corresponding measures,” of which there has so far been no sign.
In May, North Korea blew up tunnels at Punggye-ri and called this proof of its commitment to end nuclear testing, but a senior White House official accused Pyongyang at the time of breaking a promise to allow experts to witness dismantlement of the site, which meant there was no one there to verify what actually occurred.
Pompeo did not say when inspectors would be allowed to Punggye-ri, and the State Department did not respond when asked if they would be Americans or others from international nuclear bodies.
“There’s a lot of logistics that will be required to execute that,” Pompeo told a news briefing in Seoul before leaving for Beijing, where the frosty tone of talks will raise worries about China’s willingness help maintain a tough US-led sanctions regime on North Korea.
Experts said the offer on inspections amounted to dressing up of an old, unfulfilled pledge as a new concession.
“The real takeaway from this Punggye-ri pledge is that Kim has mastered the art of milking a single cosmetic concession for months to burn clock,” Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on Twitter.
“We are still talking about Punggye-ri and Sohae 6 months after he pledged to dismantle them. Brilliantly selling the same horse twice.”
Even so, Pompeo said both sides were “pretty close” to agreement on the details of a second summit, which Kim proposed to US President Donald Trump in a letter last month.
“Both the leaders believe there’s real progress that can be made, substantive progress that can be made at the next summit,” Pompeo said.
Trump and Kim held a historic first summit in Singapore on June 12 at which Kim pledged to work toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. However, his actions have fallen short of Washington’s demands for a complete inventory of its weapons and facilities and irreversible steps to give up its arsenal.
Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea who accompanied Pompeo to Pyongyang, said he offered to meet his counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, “as soon as possible” and they were in discussion over time and place.
Pompeo told South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Sunday his latest trip to Pyongyang was “another step forward” to denuclearization, but there were “many steps along the way.”
At last month’s inter-Korean summit, the North expressed its willingness to close Yongbyon if Washington took corresponding action, which Moon said would include a declaration of an end to the 1950-53 Korean War.
Moon also said the North would “permanently dismantle” Sohae missile engine testing site in the presence of experts from “concerned countries.”
Pyongyang’s failure to keep its pledge to allow international inspections at Punggye-ri in May fanned criticism that the move could easily be reversed.
In July, satellite imagery indicated it had begun dismantling the engine test site, but also without allowing outside verification. The 38 North project said last week that no dismantling activity had been spotted since August 3.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Kim had invited inspectors to visit Punggye-ri to confirm it had been irreversibly dismantled.
Sceptics of Trump administration policy said it was difficult to see what Pompeo had achieved.
“Did Mike Pompeo go all the way to Pyongyang for party planning purposes?” Daniel Russel, the chief US diplomat for East Asia until last year, said on NBC. “Is this just to set up a yet another summit without a clear understanding of what that’s going to generate?”
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Pompeo hails ‘significant’ North Korea progress
Pompeo hails ‘significant’ North Korea progress
- Both sides ‘pretty close’ to agreeing details for a second summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump
- The North expressed its willingness to close the Yongbyon nuclear site if Washington took corresponding action
Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader and US presidential hopeful dies at 84, family says
*
Jackson was inspirational orator and civil rights champion
*
He sought 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential nomination
Washington: Charismatic US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the segregated South who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at age 84, his family said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said.
Jackson, an inspirational orator and long-time Chicagoan, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017.
The media-savvy Jackson advocated for the rights of Black Americans and other marginalized communities dating back to the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s spearheaded by his mentor King, a Baptist minister and towering social activist.
Jackson weathered a spate of controversies but remained America’s preeminent civil rights figure for decades.
He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, attracting Black voters and many white liberals in mounting unexpectedly strong campaigns but fell short of becoming the first Black major party White House nominee. Ultimately, he never held elective office.
Jackson founded the Chicago-based civil rights groups Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition and served as Democratic President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to Africa in the 1990s. Jackson also was instrumental in securing the release of a number of Americans and others held overseas in places including Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia.
MESMERIZING ORATORY
Jackson pursued his political ambitions in the 1980s, relying on his mesmerizing oratory. It was not until fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008 that a Black candidate came as close to securing a major party presidential nomination as Jackson.
In 1984, Jackson won 3.3 million votes in Democratic nominating contests, about 18 percent of those cast, and finished third behind eventual nominee Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in the race for the right to face Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan. His candidacy lost momentum after it became public that Jackson had privately called Jewish people “Hymies” and New York “Hymietown.”
In 1988, Jackson was a more polished and mainstream candidate, coming in a close second in the Democratic race to face Republican George H.W. Bush. Jackson gave eventual Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis a run for his money, winning 11 state primaries and caucuses, including several in the South, and amassing 6.8 million votes in nominating contests, or 29 percent.
Jackson cast himself as a barrier-breaker for people of color, the impoverished and the powerless. He electrified the 1988 Democratic convention with a speech telling his life story and calling on Americans to find common ground.
“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth,” Jackson told the delegates in Atlanta.
“Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint,” Jackson added.
Jackson announced in 2017 at age 76 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a movement disorder marked by trembling, stiffness and poor balance and coordination, after experiencing symptoms for three years.
SOUTHERN ROOTS
Born on Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, his mother was a 16-year-old high school student and his father was a 33-year-old married man who lived next door. His mother later married another man who adopted Jackson. He grew up amid the Jim Crow era in the United States, the often brutally enforced web of racist laws and practices born in the South to subjugate Black Americans.
Jackson earned a football scholarship at the University of Illinois, but transferred to a historically Black college because he said he experienced discrimination. He began his civil rights activism while a student at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, and was arrested when he sought to enter a “whites-only” public library in South Carolina.
He attended Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968 despite failing to graduate.
Jackson became a lieutenant to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and sometimes traveled with him. On the day King was assassinated by a white man named James Earl Ray on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Jackson was just a floor below. Jackson infuriated some of King’s other associates when he told reporters he had cradled the dying King in his arms and was the last person to whom King spoke, an account they disputed.
King, who headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had installed the energetic Jackson in a leadership role to help create economic opportunities in Black communities.
Jackson later broke with King’s successor at the SCLC, Ralph Abernathy, and set up his own civil rights organization in Chicago, Operation PUSH, in the early 1970s. In 1984, Jackson founded the National Rainbow Coalition, whose broader civil rights mission also included women’s rights and gay rights, and the two organizations merged in 1996. He stepped down as the president of Rainbow-PUSH Coalition in 2023 after more than five decades of leadership and activism.
He met his wife, Jacqueline Brown, during college. They married in 1962 and had five children. His son Jesse Jackson Jr. was elected to the US House of Representatives but resigned and served prison time on a fraud conviction. Jackson also had a daughter out of wedlock in 1999 with a woman who worked at his civil rights groups, which became a scandal.
Jackson was known for personal diplomacy. After he secured the 1984 release by Syria of US naval aviator Robert Goodman Jr., President Ronald Reagan invited Jackson to the White House and expressed gratitude for the “mission of mercy.” Jackson met in 1990 with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to gain the release of hundreds of Americans and others after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He won the 1984 release of dozens of Cuban and American prisoners from Cuban jails and the release of three US airmen held in Serbia in 1999.
He hosted a weekly show on CNN from 1992 to 2000, pressed corporations for Black economic empowerment, and received the highest US civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Clinton in 2000.
Jackson continued his activism later in life, condemning the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020 amid the global racial justice movement.
Jackson was inspirational orator and civil rights champion
*
He sought 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential nomination
Washington: Charismatic US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the segregated South who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at age 84, his family said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said.
Jackson, an inspirational orator and long-time Chicagoan, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017.
The media-savvy Jackson advocated for the rights of Black Americans and other marginalized communities dating back to the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s spearheaded by his mentor King, a Baptist minister and towering social activist.
Jackson weathered a spate of controversies but remained America’s preeminent civil rights figure for decades.
He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, attracting Black voters and many white liberals in mounting unexpectedly strong campaigns but fell short of becoming the first Black major party White House nominee. Ultimately, he never held elective office.
Jackson founded the Chicago-based civil rights groups Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition and served as Democratic President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to Africa in the 1990s. Jackson also was instrumental in securing the release of a number of Americans and others held overseas in places including Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia.
MESMERIZING ORATORY
Jackson pursued his political ambitions in the 1980s, relying on his mesmerizing oratory. It was not until fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008 that a Black candidate came as close to securing a major party presidential nomination as Jackson.
In 1984, Jackson won 3.3 million votes in Democratic nominating contests, about 18 percent of those cast, and finished third behind eventual nominee Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in the race for the right to face Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan. His candidacy lost momentum after it became public that Jackson had privately called Jewish people “Hymies” and New York “Hymietown.”
In 1988, Jackson was a more polished and mainstream candidate, coming in a close second in the Democratic race to face Republican George H.W. Bush. Jackson gave eventual Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis a run for his money, winning 11 state primaries and caucuses, including several in the South, and amassing 6.8 million votes in nominating contests, or 29 percent.
Jackson cast himself as a barrier-breaker for people of color, the impoverished and the powerless. He electrified the 1988 Democratic convention with a speech telling his life story and calling on Americans to find common ground.
“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth,” Jackson told the delegates in Atlanta.
“Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint,” Jackson added.
Jackson announced in 2017 at age 76 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a movement disorder marked by trembling, stiffness and poor balance and coordination, after experiencing symptoms for three years.
SOUTHERN ROOTS
Born on Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, his mother was a 16-year-old high school student and his father was a 33-year-old married man who lived next door. His mother later married another man who adopted Jackson. He grew up amid the Jim Crow era in the United States, the often brutally enforced web of racist laws and practices born in the South to subjugate Black Americans.
Jackson earned a football scholarship at the University of Illinois, but transferred to a historically Black college because he said he experienced discrimination. He began his civil rights activism while a student at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, and was arrested when he sought to enter a “whites-only” public library in South Carolina.
He attended Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968 despite failing to graduate.
Jackson became a lieutenant to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and sometimes traveled with him. On the day King was assassinated by a white man named James Earl Ray on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Jackson was just a floor below. Jackson infuriated some of King’s other associates when he told reporters he had cradled the dying King in his arms and was the last person to whom King spoke, an account they disputed.
King, who headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had installed the energetic Jackson in a leadership role to help create economic opportunities in Black communities.
Jackson later broke with King’s successor at the SCLC, Ralph Abernathy, and set up his own civil rights organization in Chicago, Operation PUSH, in the early 1970s. In 1984, Jackson founded the National Rainbow Coalition, whose broader civil rights mission also included women’s rights and gay rights, and the two organizations merged in 1996. He stepped down as the president of Rainbow-PUSH Coalition in 2023 after more than five decades of leadership and activism.
He met his wife, Jacqueline Brown, during college. They married in 1962 and had five children. His son Jesse Jackson Jr. was elected to the US House of Representatives but resigned and served prison time on a fraud conviction. Jackson also had a daughter out of wedlock in 1999 with a woman who worked at his civil rights groups, which became a scandal.
Jackson was known for personal diplomacy. After he secured the 1984 release by Syria of US naval aviator Robert Goodman Jr., President Ronald Reagan invited Jackson to the White House and expressed gratitude for the “mission of mercy.” Jackson met in 1990 with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to gain the release of hundreds of Americans and others after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He won the 1984 release of dozens of Cuban and American prisoners from Cuban jails and the release of three US airmen held in Serbia in 1999.
He hosted a weekly show on CNN from 1992 to 2000, pressed corporations for Black economic empowerment, and received the highest US civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Clinton in 2000.
Jackson continued his activism later in life, condemning the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020 amid the global racial justice movement.
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