SEOUL: The US special envoy for North Korea met with South Korea’s national security adviser on Monday to discuss a planned second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Seoul’s presidential office said.
Stephen Biegun explained to Chung Eui-yong Washington’s stance toward North Korea ahead of talks on setting up the summit, the presidential Blue House said in a statement.
There is speculation that Biegun will meet his North Korean counterpart at the Korean border village of Panmunjom or in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, this week.
The Blue House did not specifically say what was discussed during Monday’s meeting, but said Chung told Biegun that South Korea hopes the planning talks between the US and North Korea will pave the way for a successful summit. Biegun arrived in Seoul on Sunday and also held talks with South Korean Foreign Ministry official Lee Do-hoon.
Trump and Kim met last June in Singapore, where they issued vague aspirational goals for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing when or how it would occur. Post-summit nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea have been rocky, with the countries disagreeing on which should come first — North Korea’s nuclear disarmament or the removal of US-led international sanctions against the North.
In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Trump said the second summit “is set” with Kim, but provided no further details. He said there was “a very good chance that we will make a deal.”
South Korea didn’t say whether Biegun and South Korean officials discussed the possibility of partially easing the sanctions on North Korea to allow more inter-Korean cooperation and create more space for nuclear diplomacy.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who held three summits with Kim last year and helped set up the first Trump-Kim meeting, has described inter-Korean reconciliation as crucial for resolving the nuclear standoff. But the tough sanctions have limited the range of joint activities the two Koreas can undertake.
The Koreas have discussed ambitious plans, such as reconnecting railways and roads across their border, resuming operations at a jointly run factory park in a North Korean border town and restarting South Korean tours to the North’s Diamond Mountain resort. But none is possible unless the sanctions are eased, which Washington says won’t happen unless North Korea takes stronger steps toward irreversibly and verifiably relinquishing its nuclear weapons.
In his New Year’s speech last month, Kim urged more cooperation between the Koreas and said the North is ready to reopen the factory park and resume joint tours to the resort.
Last year, North Korea released American detainees, suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests and dismantled a nuclear test site and parts of a rocket launch facility without the presence of outside experts. It has repeatedly demanded that the United States reciprocate with measures such as sanctions relief, but Washington has called for North Korea to take steps such as providing a detailed account of its nuclear and missile facilities that would be inspected and dismantled under a potential deal.
Satellite video taken since the June summit has indicated North Korea is continuing to produce nuclear materials at its weapons factories. US intelligence chiefs told Congress last Tuesday that they believe there is little likelihood Kim will voluntarily give up his nuclear weapons or missiles capable of carrying them.
Biegun said last week that Kim committed to “the dismantlement and destruction of North Korea’s plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities” during his summit with Moon in September and at a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in October.
At a second Trump-Kim summit, some experts say North Korea is likely to seek to trade the destruction of its main Yongbyon nuclear complex for a US promise to formally declare the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, open a liaison office in Pyongyang and allow the North to resume some lucrative economic projects with South Korea.
US envoy, South Korean official discuss second Trump-Kim summit
US envoy, South Korean official discuss second Trump-Kim summit
- Trump and Kim met last June in Singapore, where they issued vague aspirational goals for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula
- In his New Year’s speech last month, Kim urged more cooperation between the Koreas
Trump set to repeal scientific finding that serves as basis for US climate change policy
- The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration on Thursday will revoke a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the White House announced.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will “formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding” at a White House ceremony, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
The action “will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” she said. The bulk of the savings will stem from reduced costs for new vehicles, with the EPA projecting average per vehicle savings of more than $2,400 for popular light-duty cars, SUVs and trucks. Leavitt said.
The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet. It is used to justify regulations, such as auto emissions standards, intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by climate change — deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.
Legal challenges would be certain for any action that effectively would repeal those regulations, with environmental groups describing the shift as the single biggest attack in US history on federal efforts to address climate change.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the Obama-era rule was “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said EPA “is actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people.”
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order that directed EPA to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticized his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying they were “willing to bankrupt the country” in an effort to combat climate change.
Democrats “created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence ... segments of our economy,″ Zeldin said in announcing the proposed rule last July. ”And it cost Americans a lot of money.”
Peter Zalzal, a lawyer and associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, countered that the EPA will be encouraging more climate pollution, higher health insurance and fuel costs and thousands of avoidable premature deaths.
Zeldin’s push “is cynical and deeply damaging, given the mountain of scientific evidence supporting the finding, the devastating climate harms Americans are experiencing right now and EPA’s clear obligation to protect Americans’ health and welfare,” he said.
Zalzal and other critics noted that the Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case that planet-warming greenhouse gases, caused by burning of oil and other fossil fuels, are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Since the high court’s decision, in a case known as Massachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding, including a 2023 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Following Zeldin’s proposal to repeal the rule, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reassessed the science underpinning the 2009 finding and concluded it was “accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.”
Much of the understanding of climate change that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 is now resolved, the NAS panel of scientists said in a September report. “The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute,” the panel said.
