Top Senate Democrats told the president Monday that to earn their support, any deal with North Korea must prioritize complete, verifiable denuclearization, include a tough inspections regime, and ensure the elimination of Pyongyang’s ballistic missile program.
Minority leader Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez, and other lawmakers laid out those demands in a letter to President Donald Trump ahead of his planned summit with Kim Jong-un next week in Singapore. If a future potential deal does not meet their conditions, the Democrats warned, Congress “must act as a check” and leverage its sanctions and oversight power.
“Any agreement with North Korea must build on the current nuclear test suspension and ultimately include the dismantlement and removal of all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from North Korea,” the lawmakers wrote.
A Democrat-supported agreement must feature “full, complete, and verifiable denuclearization” as its end goal. That includes the permanent dismantlement of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons infrastructure, such as test sites and research and development facilities.
Sanctions relief must be contingent on the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, they added. “Any deal that explicitly or implicitly gives North Korea sanctions relief for anything other than the verifiable performance of its obligations to dismantle its nuclear and missile arsenal is a bad deal.”
The lawmakers said an agreement must also involve the suspension of ballistic missile testing, “including any space launch,” and the elimination of that program.
“Ultimately, since North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is so advanced, any agreement must include the dismantlement of ballistic missiles and a prohibition on all ballistic missile development,” they said. “In addition, sufficient safeguards must be in place to assure that no ballistic missiles and associated technology are proliferated or exported.”
Pyongyang must further agree to “robust compliance inspections” for both its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as a compliance regime for its chemical and biological weapons programs.
“Inspectors must have complete access to all nuclear-related sites and facilities with real time verification of North Korean compliance,” they wrote. “These compliance regimes must include “anywhere, anytime” inspections, including of all non-declared suspicious sites, and snapback sanctions if North Korea is not in full compliance.”
Trump administration officials have called for the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated Sunday that Pyongyang will see sanctions relief “only when it demonstrates verifiable and irreversible steps to denuclearization.”
The president called off the scheduled summit with Pyongyang in late May and cited “tremendous anger and open hostility” from North Korea, after officials there appeared to push back on U.S. denuclearization demands. Trump said last week that the meeting is back on, though he tempered expectations and described it as a “get-to-know-you kind of a situation.”
South Korea has said that the North has “pledged its intent to pursue complete denuclearization.” Per the South, Kim has also expressed concerns about guaranteeing his regime’s survival if he agrees to denuclearize, according to the Wall Street Journal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed hope late last month that the June summit will allow Pyongyang to change its calculus.
“It’s my hope that when he and President Trump get a chance to be together that we can get the North Koreans to make the strategic shift about how best to serve the country,” he told lawmakers. “That the nuclear weapons program isn’t in fact the thing that keeps the regime in power, but the thing that prevents the regime from being in a place it wants to be with economic success.”
