U.S. expert urges Trump to use negotiating skills to cut deal with N. Korea

By Chang Jae-soon WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President-elect Donald Trump should use his seasoned negotiating skills to cut a deal with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, a U.S. expert Tuesday said after rare talks with a group of senior diplomats from the communist nation. Joel Wit, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University's US-Korea Institute and founder of the website 38 North, made the suggestion in an article to the Atlantic magazine after returning from three days of meetings with North Korean diplomats in Geneva last week. Wit called for opening negotiations with Pyongyang, saying that the North Korean nuclear issue, one of the biggest problems facing the incoming administration, might also be his biggest opportunity. "Donald Trump could have an opportunity early in his presidency, if he follows his instincts instead of all the wrong advice he is likely to get on how to deal with North Korea, to prove his Promethean negotiating skills on one of the most serious national-security challenges the United States will confront over the next four years," he said in the article written jointly with Richard Sokolsky, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. During campaigning, Trump expressed a willingness to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying there is nothing wrong with talking, Wit said. However, the incoming leader appears, like his predecessors, appears to "want to dump the North Korean problem into China's lap," he said. "But Trump's well-advertised instincts for negotiating good deals point to a better alternative. North Korea (and its Chinese patrons) have stated repeatedly that it wants the United States to end what it sees as a hostile policy of regime change in North Korea, and to have the United States accept the country's status as a sovereign and independent nation," Wit said. "This, rather than ineffectual sanctions, is the real source of American leverage with the North," he said. The Trump administration could make the North "a serious and credible diplomatic offer" to negotiate a peace treaty, which replaces the 1953 Korean War armistice, and a key part of the process will be to "first freeze Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs and then move on to reversing and eventually ending them if the political environment continues to improve," Wit said. It won't be too late to impose stronger sanctions on the North after first giving negotiation a chance, he said. "If this policy does succeed, the new administration will have scored a significant success that none of its immediate predecessors were able or willing to manage," Wit said. A deal with the North could include a halt to the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and and hydrogen bombs; the return of U.N. inspectors to its main nuclear facility; a resumption of inter-Korean military-to-military talks on reducing the dangers of confrontation on the peninsula; and renewed talks on achieving further steps leading to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, he said. "No one believes that the North will agree to give up all its nuclear weapons and related infrastructure and abandon its development of ICBMs and missiles," Wit said. "But there is a great deal that can be done to freeze and then maybe eventually reverse these programs, bringing the world closer to that ultimate objective." "For Trump, who claims he knows how to negotiate great deals, getting one with the North should just be another walk in Central Park," he said. Last week, Wit and former senior State Department nonproliferation official Robert Einhorn held discussions in Geneva with senior North Korean diplomats, such as U.N. Ambassador Jang Il-hun and Choe Son-hui, director-general in charge of North American affairs at the North's Foreign Ministry. In a phone call with Yonhap News Agency on Tuesday, Wit refused to say what was discussed during the meetings. But his article appears to reflect some of the discussions. jschang@yna.co.kr (END)