{"id":13134,"date":"2018-08-29T10:35:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T10:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13134"},"modified":"2018-08-29T10:35:14","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T10:35:14","slug":"us-to-continue-military-drills-with-south-korea-mattis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13134","title":{"rendered":"US to continue military drills with South Korea: Mattis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The US<\/a> military has no plans to suspend major military exercises with South Korea<\/a>, James Mattis, the US defence secretary, said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Following a June meeting between US President Donald Trump<\/a> and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un<\/a>, the US scrapped its largest military exercises with South Korea as a goodwill gesture according to Mattis, but he told reporters on Tuesday the US would continue other training operations with South Korea.<\/p>\n

“We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises,” he said, adding that no decisions had yet been made on major exercises for next year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The June summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim was the first meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean\u00a0leader since the nations went to war in the 1950s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim broadly agreed to work towards denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, but made no indication that North Korea<\/a> is willing to give up its weapons unilaterally, which is the Trump administration’s demand.<\/p>\n

However, since then, diplomats have failed to advance the process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, Trump cancelled a meeting<\/a> between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean officials, citing insufficient progress on denuclearisation.<\/p>\n

\n

I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula…<\/p>\n

\u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trump has blamed the lack of progress partially on China<\/a>, suggesting Beijing was stalling efforts to disarm Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

China responded<\/a> to those claims, calling the US president’s actions “irresponsible”.<\/p>\n

Stalemate<\/span><\/h2>\n

Trump’s June decision to unilaterally suspend drills with South Korea was broadly criticised as a premature concession to Kim, who Trump wants to give up his country’s nuclear weapons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, North Korea wants steps towards a peace treaty between the two countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Korean war<\/a> in the late 1950s ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty which left North Korea technically still at war with US-led UN<\/a> forces in South Korea.<\/p>\n

US officials fear North Korea might decide to cut a separate deal with South Korea, thus driving a wedge between the US-South Korea alliance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A South Korea presidential spokesperson acknowledged that talks between Washington and Pyongyang were at a stalemate.<\/span><\/p>\n

“With North Korea and the US remaining stalemated, there is an even bigger need for an inter-Korea<\/a> summit,” Kim Eui-kyeom, the spokesperson for the presidential Blue House, said at a press briefing.<\/p>\n

According to a UN report from earlier this month, North Korea has not stopped<\/a> working on its nuclear programme despite Kim’s vague commitment to “denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula” – a far cry from long-standing US demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result of its nuclear programme, North Korea has been under sanctions<\/a> since 2006, when the country carried out its first nuclear test.<\/p>\n

In November 2017, the country said it had successfully developed a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States mainland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following that announcement, more sanctions were imposed by the UN in December.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US military has no plans to suspend major military exercises with South Korea, James Mattis, the US defence secretary, said on Tuesday. Following a June meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, the US scrapped its largest military exercises with South Korea as a goodwill gesture according to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}