North Korea has opened a high-profile political conference to discuss how to overcome “harsh trials and difficulties,” state media reported yesterday, days before a year-end deadline set by Pyongyang for Washington to make concessions in nuclear negotiations.
Some observers predict North Korea might use the conference to announce that it plans to abandon faltering diplomacy with the US and lift its moratorium on major weapons tests.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea convened in Pyongyang on Saturday.
Photo: AP
It called the gathering the “first-day session,” suggesting it would continue for at least another day.
The meeting is intended to “overcome the manifold and harsh trials and difficulties, and further accelerate the development of the revolution with transparent anti-imperialist independent stand and firm will,” the KCNA said.
“Important matters” regarding the party and national defense would also be discussed at the meeting, it said.
Kim made a speech on general state affairs and the work of the central committee, it said, but gave no further details.
In April last year, at the start of nuclear talks with the US, North Korea held a similar party meeting, and announced that it would suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests and shift its national focus to developing the economy.
After his second summit with US President Donald Trump in February in Vietnam failed, Kim gave the US until the end of this year to offer new initiatives to salvage the nuclear negotiations.
North Korea has warned that its resumption of tests of long-range missiles and nuclear devices depends on US action.
Restarting nuclear and missile tests would be a blow to Trump, who has boasted that North Korea’s moratorium was a major foreign policy win.
However, that would also likely completely derail diplomacy with the US and further dim the prospect that North Korea would get badly needed sanctions relief to rebuild its troubled economy, some experts said.
North Korea is pushing for major sanctions relief in return for limited denuclearization steps, but the US maintains that sanctions must stay in place until North Korea takes significant steps toward ridding itself of nuclear weapons and technology.
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