Tag Archives: United States

U.S. hints at shift on Russia with sanctions and condemnation

National flags of Russia and the U.S. fly at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

By Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – By imposing new sanctions on Russia and condemning a suspected Russian chemical attack in Britain, Washington has hinted at a tougher stance toward Moscow despite President Donald Trump’s stated desire for better ties.

The U.S. Treasury slapped sanctions on 19 Russian citizens and five entities for election meddling and cyber attacks in the most significant steps the United States has taken against Russia since Trump took office amid U.S. intelligence agency allegations that Moscow tried to help him win the 2016 election.

While the Treasury put off targeting oligarchs and officials close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, it said further sanctions were coming and for the first time blamed Moscow for cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the U.S. power grid, including nuclear facilities.

After initially equivocating about a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in Salisbury, England, the White House joined a statement by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in which they said they “abhor the attack” and blamed it on Moscow.

Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning.

Thursday’s actions have caused some Russia analysts to ask whether the administration is taking a more confrontational stance despite Trump’s repeated statements in the election campaign that he wanted a better relationship with Moscow, his praise for Putin and apparent reluctance to criticize the Russian leader.

“I think we have hit an inflection point in the current administration’s approach towards Russia,” said a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There has been a shift in balance.”

The diplomat attributed the evolution partly to a clash between U.S.-backed and Russian-backed forces in the Syrian city of Deir al-Zor in February; Russia pounding Syria’s eastern Ghouta enclave of anti-government rebels with air strikes during the past month; and Putin showing a video on March 1 of a weapon appearing to hover over what looked like a map of Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Those three things, taken together, have caused a shift in analysis in parts … of the administration,” said the diplomat.

TRUMP EXASPERATED

While there was a sense at the White House that there has been a hardening of Trump’s view toward Russia, at least for now, it was unclear whether this represented a long-term shift.

A senior administration official said there was some feeling that the goodwill that Trump extended toward Russia when he took over has not been reciprocated and that the Russians do not want to have good relations with the United States.

This has exasperated Trump, who instructed his team to make sure the United States appeared to be in solidarity with Britain over the nerve agent attack.

Eugene Rumer, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia, suggested Trump’s approach may ultimately be guided by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Russia meddled in the election campaign.

The Kremlin denies interfering. Mueller is also investigating any potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow officials, something Trump denies.

“My hypothesis is … the White House stance on Russia is going to be determined to a large extent by how much they think the investigation threatens their political position,” Rumer said.

Officials from multiple U.S. agencies discussed next steps at a meeting on Thursday, with one aim being to avoid personally attacking Putin and taking in-your-face steps that could prompt retaliation.

In announcing Thursday’s sanctions, U.S. officials made clear more would follow.

“This is just one of a series of ongoing actions that we’re taking to counter Russian aggression,” one U.S. official told reporters. “There will be more to come, and we’re going to continue to employ our resources to combat malicious Russian activity and respond to nefarious attacks.”

Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center on March 4 after being exposed to what the British authorities have identified as a military-grade, Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

Another U.S. official attributed the sharper edge to U.S. policy to increasingly brazen behavior by Russia in cyberspace and on the ground, culminating in the Salisbury attack.

This U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also pointed to Russia’s refusal to restrain Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the role of Russian “mercenaries” in Syria, now entering its eighth year of civil war.

The official said it was unclear if Trump himself saw Russia as an adversary but suggested Putin may have “overplayed his hand” by leaving Russian fingerprints on the hacking, the chemical attack, the deployment of ground-launched cruise missiles which the U.S. says violate an arms control treaty, and a March 1 speech on “invincible” Russian weaponry.

“If the president felt like Putin was one-upping him, not to mention stealing the limelight, then it wouldn’t be surprising that he would react,” the official said.

While more sanctions are expected, it was not clear if the Trump policy toward Russia was changing, especially given Trump’s unpredictability, said a third official, who is involved in talks on next steps.

“Tomorrow is another day,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Warren Strobel; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Grant McCool and Paul Tait)

Trump asked South Korea officials to show flexibility in trade talks: Seoul

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in hold a joint press conference at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, November 7, 2017. REUTERS/Jung Yeon-Je/Pool

SEOUL (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump asked South Korean officials to show flexibility in trade negotiations with the United States in a phone call with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the Blue House said in a statement on Friday.

South Korea and the United States were scheduled to hold a third round of talks for amendments to an existing bilateral free trade agreement this week in Washington. Trump has repeatedly said the free trade deal with South Korea is “unfair” and has threatened to scrap it altogether on multiple occasions.

(Reporting by Christine Kim; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

In a first, U.S. blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid

An electrical line technician works on restoring power in Vilonia, Arkansas April 29, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Alle

By Dustin Volz and Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Thursday blamed the Russian government for a campaign of cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the U.S. power grid, marking the first time the United States has publicly accused Moscow of hacking into American energy infrastructure.

Beginning in March 2016, or possibly earlier, Russian government hackers sought to penetrate multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation and manufacturing, according to a U.S. security alert published Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security and FBI said in the alert that a “multi-stage intrusion campaign by Russian government cyber actors” had targeted the networks of small commercial facilities “where they staged malware, conducted spear phishing, and gained remote access into energy sector networks.” The alert did not name facilities or companies targeted.

The direct condemnation of Moscow represented an escalation in the Trump administration’s attempts to deter Russia’s aggression in cyberspace, after senior U.S. intelligence officials said in recent weeks the Kremlin believes it can launch hacking operations against the West with impunity.

It coincided with a decision Thursday by the U.S. Treasury Department to impose sanctions on 19 Russian people and five groups, including Moscow’s intelligence services, for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and other malicious cyber attacks.

Russia in the past has denied it has tried to hack into other countries’ infrastructure, and vowed on Thursday to retaliate for the new sanctions.

‘UNPRECEDENTED AND EXTRAORDINARY’

U.S. security officials have long warned that the United States may be vulnerable to debilitating cyber attacks from hostile adversaries. It was not clear what impact the attacks had on the firms that were targeted.

But Thursday’s alert provided a link to an analysis by the U.S. cyber security firm Symantec last fall that said a group it had dubbed Dragonfly had targeted energy companies in the United States and Europe and in some cases broke into the core systems that control the companies’ operations.

Malicious email campaigns dating back to late 2015 were used to gain entry into organizations in the United States, Turkey and Switzerland, and likely other countries, Symantec said at the time, though it did not name Russia as the culprit.

The decision by the United States to publicly attribute hacking attempts of American critical infrastructure was “unprecedented and extraordinary,” said Amit Yoran, a former U.S. official who founded DHS’s Computer Emergency Response Team.

“I have never seen anything like this,” said Yoran, now chief executive of the cyber firm Tenable, said.

A White House National Security Council spokesman did not respond when asked what specifically prompted the public blaming of Russia. U.S. officials have historically been reluctant to call out such activity in part because the United States also spies on infrastructure in other parts of the world.

News of the hacking campaign targeting U.S. power companies first surfaced in June in a confidential alert to industry that described attacks on industrial firms, including nuclear plants, but did not attribute blame.

“People sort of suspected Russia was behind it, but today’s statement from the U.S. government carries a lot of weight,” said Ben Read, manager for cyber espionage analysis with cyber security company FireEye Inc.

ENGINEERS TARGETED

The campaign targeted engineers and technical staff with access to industrial controls, suggesting the hackers were interested in disrupting operations, though FireEye has seen no evidence that they actually took that step, Read said.

A former senior DHS official familiar with the government response to the campaign said that Russia’s targeting of infrastructure networks dropped off after the publication in the fall of Symantec’s research and an October government alert, which detailed technical forensics about the hacking attempts but did not name Russia.

The official declined to say whether the campaign was still ongoing or provide specifics on which targets were breached, or how close hackers may have gotten to operational control systems.

“We did not see them cross into the control networks,” DHS cyber security official Rick Driggers told reporters at a dinner on Thursday evening.

Driggers said he was unaware of any cases of control networks being compromised in the United States and that the breaches were limited to business networks. But, he added, “We know that there is intent there.”

It was not clear what Russia’s motive was. Many cyber security experts and former U.S. officials say such behavior is generally espionage-oriented with the potential, if needed, for sabotage.

Russia has shown a willingness to leverage access into energy networks for damaging effect in the past. Kremlin-linked hackers were widely blamed for two attacks on the Ukrainian energy grid in 2015 and 2016, that caused temporary blackouts for hundreds of thousands of customers and were considered first-of-their-kind assaults.

Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, asked the Trump administration earlier this month to provide a threat assessment gauging Russian capabilities to breach the U.S. electric grid.

It was the third time Cantwell and other senators had asked for such a review. The administration has not yet responded, a spokesman for Cantwell’s office said on Thursday.

Last July, there were news reports that the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp, which operates a nuclear plant in Kansas, had been targeted by hackers from an unknown origin.

Spokeswoman Jenny Hageman declined to say at the time if the plant had been hacked but said that there had been no operational impact to the plant because operational computer systems were separate from the corporate network. Hageman on Thursday said the company does not comment on security matters.

John Keeley, a spokesman for the industry group the Nuclear Energy Institute, said: “There has been no successful cyber attack against any U.S. nuclear facility, including Wolf Creek.”

(Reporting by Dustin Volz and Timothy Gardner, additional reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tom Brown, Alistair Bell and Cynthia Osterman)

Nerve agent planted in luggage of Russian agent’s daughter: The Telegraph

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand behind a cordon placed around a payment machine covered by a tent in a supermarket car park near to where former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found poisoned in Salisbury, Britain, March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

LONDON (Reuters) – The military-grade nerve toxin that poisoned former Russian agent Sergei Skripal was planted in his daughter’s suitcase before she left Moscow, The Telegraph newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources.

Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the genteel southern English city of Salisbury on March 4. They have been in a critical condition in hospital ever since.

Yulia Skripal flew to London from Russia on March 3, according to counter-terrorism police.

British investigators are working on the theory that the toxin was impregnated in an item of clothing or cosmetics or in a gift that was opened in Skripal’s house in Salisbury, the Telegraph said, citing the unidentified sources.

Britain has said the toxin, which also poisoned a British police officer who attended the scene, was Novichok, a lethal nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military.

After the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War Two, Britain has pinned the blame on Moscow and given 23 Russians who it said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the London embassy a week to leave.

Britain, the United States, Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain how the toxin came to be used on British soil. Russia has denied any involvement and has accused London of whipping up anti-Russian hysteria.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

U.S., Israeli troops train together in mock Mideast village

U.S. Marine and an Israeli soldier practice urban combat during Juniper Cobra, a U.S.-Israeli joint air defence exercise, in Zeelim, southern Israel, March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

By Amir Cohen

ZEELIM MILITARY BASE, Israel (Reuters) – The Israeli military hosted U.S. Marines this week for an urban combat drill in a mock-up of a generic Middle East village, sharing know-how and signaling the allies’ shared interests as their leaders close ranks on a host of regional issues.

“We are willing to work and train together, and if God wills it, if we ever need to be side by side, then we will,” Lieutenant-Colonel Marcus Mainz of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit told Reuters during the exercise at Israel’s Zeelim base.

His troops joined Israeli special forces regiments to practise battle formation, helicopter deployment and medical evacuations in a mock-up village in the desert, complete with Arabic graffiti and a fake mosque.

The maneuvers were part of a wider, biennial joint air defense exercise known as Juniper Cobra, which this year took place amid heightened Israeli and U.S. concern over the missile arsenal of Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Mainz said his troops had learned from the Israelis’ experiences in fighting Hamas guerrillas in Gaza, and had in turn shared tips from U.S. warfronts.

“They teach them what to see when they were either in the Gaza Strip or somewhere else on the battlefield, for us in Afghanistan and Iraq, and teach that young soldier what to look for,” he said.

U.S. Marines and Israeli soldiers practice urban combat during Juniper Cobra, a U.S.-Israeli joint air defence exercise, in Zeelim, southern Israel, March 12, 2018. Picture taken March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

U.S. Marines and Israeli soldiers practice urban combat during Juniper Cobra, a U.S.-Israeli joint air defence exercise, in Zeelim, southern Israel, March 12, 2018. Picture taken March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

“And what happens is they start getting excited and they are talking about ‘I learned this here’, ‘I learned that there’.”

Under President Donald Trump, the United States has boosted its already strong support for Israel – including by recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, a move that angered many Muslims and Arabs who back the Palestinian claim on the city.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Gareth Jones)

France will strike Syria chemical arms sites if used to kill: Macron

FILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron gestures as he addresses a news conference in Varanasi, India, March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

PARIS (Reuters) – France is prepared to launch targeted strikes against any site in Syria used to deploy chemical attacks that result in the deaths of civilians, President Emmanuel Macron said.

Shortly before the United Nations was due to discuss Syria, Macron said Moscow, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, had not done enough to permit relief efforts into the rebel-held Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta.

Asked about the Syrian conflict at a news conference in India, Macron said France would be ready to strike if it found “irrefutable evidence” chemical weapons had been used to kill.

“The day we have, in particular in tandem with our American partners, irrefutable proof that the red line was crossed — namely the chemical weapons were used to lethal effect — we will do what the Americans themselves did moreover a few months ago; we would put ourselves in position to proceed with targeted strikes,” Macron said.

The French leader has made the threat before but has so far made little headway influencing events in Syria.

“We are cross-matching our own information with that of our allies but to put it very clearly we have an independent capacity to identify targets and launch strikes where needed.”

Syria signed a Russian-brokered deal to give up its arsenal of chemical weapons to avert U.S. air strikes after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in 2013. Last year, the United States again accused Damascus of using nerve gas and launched air strikes.

Since then, Washington has repeatedly accused Damascus of using chlorine gas in attacks. Chlorine is far less deadly than nerve agents and possession of it is allowed for civilian purposes, but its use as a weapon is banned.

Damascus and Moscow have been carrying out a fierce bombing campaign and ground assault against the besieged rebel-held eastern Ghouta enclave since mid-February, despite a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a countrywide ceasefire.

“This is a debate we will have in the coming hours at the United Nations, where it will be shown that the concessions on the ground from Russia, but first and foremost the Syrian regime and its Iranian allies, are insufficient,” Macron said.

(Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey and Brian Love; Editing by Richard Lough and Peter Graff)

U.S. economy gains 313,000 jobs in February; wage growth slows

Job seekers and recruiters gather at TechFair in Los Angeles, California, U.S. March 8, 2018. REUTERS/Monica Almeida

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. job growth surged in February, recording its biggest increase in more than 1-1/2 years, but a slowdown in wage gains pointed to only a gradual increase in inflation this year.

Nonfarm payrolls jumped by 313,000 jobs last month, boosted by the largest rise in construction jobs since 2007, the Labor Department said on Friday. The payrolls gain was the biggest since July 2016 and triple the roughly 100,000 jobs the economy needs to create each month to keep up with growth in the working-age population.

The labor market is benefiting from strong domestic demand, an improvement in global growth as well as robust U.S. business sentiment following the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion income tax cut package that come into effect in January.

Average hourly earnings edged up four cents, or 0.1 percent, to $26.75 in February, a slowdown from the 0.3 percent rise in January. That lowered the year-on-year increase in average hourly earnings to 2.6 percent from 2.8 percent in January.

The unemployment rate was unchanged at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent in February for a fifth straight month as 806,000 people entered the labor force in a sign of confidence in the job market. The average workweek rebounded to 34.5 hours after falling to 34.4 hours in January.

With Federal Reserve officials considering the labor market to be near or a little beyond full employment, the moderation in wage growth last month did little to change the view that the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates at its March 20-21 policy meeting.

Slow wage growth, however, could temper expectations the Fed will raise its rate forecast to four hikes this year from three. There is optimism that tightening labor market conditions will spur faster wage growth this year and pull inflation toward the Fed’s 2 percent target.

“While the employment gains unequivocally suggest underlying strength in the economy, wage gains remain muted enough for the Fed to continue with an only gradual normalization of the policy stance. Stock markets are reacting accordingly,” said Harm Bandholz, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Bank in New York.

Speculation that the central bank would upgrade its rate projections was stoked by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell when he told lawmakers last week that “my personal outlook for the economy has strengthened since December.”

While Powell said there was no evidence of the economy overheating, he added “the thing we don’t want to have happen is to get behind the curve.”

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls rising by 200,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate falling to 4.0 percent. Average hourly earnings had been expected to increase 0.2 percent in February.

Data for December and January was revised to show the economy adding 54,000 more jobs than previously reported.

U.S. stock indexes opened higher after the data while prices of U.S. Treasuries were trading lower. The dollar was largely unchanged against a basket of currencies.

CONSTRUCTION SHINES

Some companies like Starbucks Corp and FedEx Corp have said they would use some of their windfall from a tax cut package to boost workers’ salaries. Walmart announced an increase in entry-level wages for hourly employees at its U.S. stores effective in February.

The employment report suggested the economy remained strong despite weak consumer spending, home sales, industrial production and a wider trade deficit in January that prompted economists to lower their first-quarter growth estimates. Gross domestic product estimates for the January-March quarter are around a 2 percent annualized growth rate. The economy grew at a 2.5 percent pace in the fourth quarter.

The full impact of the tax cuts and a planned increase in government spending has yet to be felt, and a robust job market could heighten fears of the economy overheating.

“The economy is simply too strong,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “There’s no reason whatsoever for the Federal Reserve to have a stimulative monetary policy at this stage of the business cycle.”

Economists expect the unemployment rate to fall to 3.5 percent this year. A broader measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment, was unchanged at 8.2 percent last month.

The labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one, rose three-tenths of a percentage point to a five-month high of 63.0 percent in February.

An even broader gauge of labor market health, the percentage of working-age Americans with a job, increased to 60.4 percent last month from 60.1 percent in January.

Employment gains were led by the construction sector, which added 61,000 jobs, the most since March 2007. Hiring at construction sites was likely boosted by unseasonably mild temperatures in February.

Manufacturing payrolls increased by 31,000 jobs, rising for a seventh straight month. The sector is being supported by strong domestic and international demand as well as a weaker dollar. Retail payrolls jumped by 50,300, the largest increase since February 2016.

The Labor Department said that was because on an unadjusted basis the sector hired fewer workers than usual for the holiday season and did not shed many jobs after the holidays. As a result, retail employment rose after the seasonal adjustment, the department said.

Government employment increased by 26,000 jobs last month, with hiring of teachers by local governments accounting for the bulk of the rise. There were also increases in payrolls for professional and business services, leisure and hospitality as well as healthcare and social assistance.

Financial sector payrolls increased by 28,000 last month, the most since October 2005.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Paul Simao)

Trump says prepared to meet North Korea’s Kim in first-ever such parley

FILE PHOTO - A combination photo shows a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) handout of Kim Jong Un released on May 10, 2016, and Donald Trump posing for a photo in New York City, U.S., May 17, 2016. REUTERS/KCNA handout via Reuters/File Photo & REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

By Christine Kim and Steve Holland

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he was prepared to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in what would be the first face-to-face encounter between leaders from the two countries and could mark a breakthrough in a standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons.

Kim had “committed to denuclearization” and to suspending nuclear and missile tests, South Korea’s National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong told reporters at the White House on Thursday after briefing Trump on a meeting South Korean officials held with Kim earlier this week.

Kim and Trump have engaged in an increasingly bellicose exchange of insults over the North’s nuclear and missile programs, which it pursues in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, before an easing of tension coinciding with last month’s Winter Olympics in the South.

“A meeting is being planned,” Trump said on Twitter after speaking to Chung, setting up what would be his biggest foreign policy gamble since taking office in January 2017.

Chung said Trump agreed to meet by May in response to Kim’s invitation. A senior U.S. official said later it could happen “in a matter of a couple of months, with the exact timing and place still to be determined.”

Both Russia and China, who joined years of on-again, off-again “six-party” talks, along with the United States, the two Koreas and Japan, aimed at ending the standoff, welcomed the new, positive signals after months of deteriorating relations between North Korea and the United States.

Trump has derided the North Korean leader as a “maniac,” referred to him as “little rocket man” and threatened in a speech to the United Nations last year to “totally destroy” Kim’s country of 26 million people if it attacked the United States or one of its allies.

Kim responded by calling the U.S. president a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-In, who led the pursuit of detente with North Korea during his country’s hosting of the Winter Olympics, said the summit would set a course for denuclearization, according to a presidential spokesman. Trump had agreed to meet Kim without any preconditions, another South Korean official said.

Asian stock markets rose on the news, with Japan’s Nikkei <.N225> ending up 0.5 percent and South Korean stocks <.KS11> more than 1 percent higher. The dollar also rose against the safe-haven Japanese yen <JPY=>. U.S. stock index futures were little changed ahead of the market’s open Friday morning. [MKTS/GLOB]

“It’s good news, no doubt,” said Hong Chun-Uk, chief economist at Kiwoom Securities in Seoul. “But this will likely prove to be only a short-lived factor unless more and stronger actions follow.”

Trump had previously said he was willing to meet Kim under the right circumstances but had indicated the time was not right for such talks. He mocked U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in October for “wasting his time” trying to talk to North Korea.

Tillerson said earlier on Thursday during a visit to Africa that, although “talks about talks” might be possible with Pyongyang, denuclearization negotiations were likely a long way off.

‘NO MISSILE TESTS’

“Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze,” Trump said on Twitter on Thursday night. “Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached.”

A meeting between Kim and Trump, whose exchange of insults had raised fear of war, would be a major turnaround after a year in which North Korea has carried out a battery of tests aimed at developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

Trump’s aides have been wary of North Korea’s diplomatic overtures because of its history of reneging on international commitments and the failure of efforts on disarmament by previous U.S. administrations.

South Koreans responded positively to the news, with online comments congratulating Moon for laying the groundwork for the Trump-Kim talks. Some even suggested Moon should receive the Nobel Peace prize, although scepticism over previous failed talks remained.

North and South Korea, where the United Sates stations 28,500 troops, are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a ceasefire, not a truce.

‘IT MADE SENSE’

Daniel Russel, until last April the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, the most senior U.S. diplomatic position for Asia, said he wanted to see detail and hear from North Korea on the plans.

“Also remember that (North Korea) has for many years proposed that the president of the United States personally engage with North Korea’s leaders as an equal – one nuclear power to another,” he said. “What is new isn’t the proposal, it’s the response.”

A senior administration official told Reuters that Trump agreed to the meeting because it “made sense to accept an invitation to meet with the one person who can actually make decisions instead of repeating the sort of long slog of the past”.

“President Trump has made his reputation on making deals,” the official said.

Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said Trump’s firm stance on North Korea gave the best hope in decades to resolve the threat peacefully.

“A word of warning to North Korean President Kim Jong Un – the worst possible thing you can do is meet with President Trump in person and try to play him,” Graham said on Twitter. “If you do that, it will be the end of you – and your regime.”

Some U.S. officials and experts worry North Korea could buy time to build up and refine its nuclear arsenal if it drags out talks with Washington.

‘TANGIBLE STEPS’

In what would be a key North Korean concession, Chung, the South Korean official, said Kim understood that “routine” joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States must continue.

Pyongyang had previously demanded that such joint drills, which it has said it sees as a preparation for invasion, be suspended in order for any U.S. talks to go forward.

Tensions over North Korea rose to their highest in years in 2017 and the Trump administration warned that all options were on the table, including military ones, in dealing with Pyongyang.

Signs of a thaw emerged this year, with North and South Korea resuming talks and North Korea attending the Winter Olympics. During the Pyongyang talks this week, the two Koreas agreed on a summit in late April, their first since 2007.

Japan, however, remained cautious.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump, in a call on Thursday, vowed to continue to enforce sanctions until Pyongyang took “tangible steps … toward denuclearization,” the White House said in a statement late Thursday.

“Japan and the United States will not waver in their firm stance that they will continue to put maximum pressure until North Korea takes concrete action towards the complete, verifiable and irreversible end to nuclear missile development,” Abe told reporters in Tokyo.

(Reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL, and Jeff Mason, David Brunnstrom, Matt Spetalnick, Steve Holland, Yara Bayoumy and John Walcott in WASHINGTON; Additional reporting by Eric Beech, Mohammad Zargham, Susan Cornwell and Susan Heavey in WASHINGTON, and Kaori Kaneko in TOKYO; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

Over hotpot and soju, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un joked about himself

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to people attending a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea’s Kim Jong Un joked about his image in international media while serving South Korean officials local spirits and cold noodles during their unprecedented visit to Pyongyang this week, two South Korean government sources said.

During the meeting, Kim committed to giving up his nuclear weapons and told the South Korea officials he would like to meet U.S. President Donald Trump, delegation leader Chung Eui-yong told reporters at the White House on Thursday – a potentially dramatic breakthrough in nuclear tensions with Pyongyang.

Kim made light-hearted remarks about how he is viewed outside North Korea in international media and elsewhere, one Blue House official said. The officials who spoke asked to remain unnamed due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The North Korean leader, repeatedly derided as “Little Rocket Man” by Trump, was “very aware” of his image, the official said, and reacted to comments made about him in a “relaxed” manner by joking about himself from time to time.

South Korean officials say Trump and Kim now plan to meet by the end of May, in what would be the first ever meeting between a sitting U.S. President and a North Korean leader.

Tensions rose to their highest in years in 2017 following a battery of missile tests by North Korea, before a detente championed by South Korean President Moon Jae-In during his country’s hosting of the Winter Olympics began to bear fruit.

Kim told the visiting delegation Moon could rest easy at night now that Pyongyang had decided not to carry out nuclear or missile tests while talks were ongoing, a Blue House official said.

“President Moon has had a rough time chairing national security meetings at the break of dawn whenever we fired missiles,” Kim was cited as saying during a dinner meeting with the visiting South Koreans.

“If working-level talks ever cease and hostility appears, (President Moon) and I can easily resolve it with a phone call,” Kim referring to the hotline the two Koreas are planning to install to connect Kim and Moon. It will be the first such hotline to be set up between the heads of the two Koreas.

The Trump administration has warned all options are on the table, including military ones, in dealing with Pyongyang, which has pursued its weapons programs in defiance of ever tougher U.N. sanctions.

When the South Korean officials visited, no hard feelings were displayed and Kim Jong Un was the first to tackle sensitive topics, including the resumption of a military exercise between South Korea and the United States that was postponed for a peaceful Winter Olympics, the Blue House official said.

“This is when we knew the efforts of North and South Korea taken after the Moon Jae-in administration began had paid off,” said one participant of the North Korea visit.

Kim’s administration had also taken note of what North Korean foods the South Korean officials had mentioned while his sister Kim Yo Jong was visiting Seoul for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

The delegation was served North Korean hotpot the first day and cold noodles – another regional specialty – the next, the Blue House official said.

Kim and the officials shared several bottles of wine, liquor made of ginseng and Pyongyang soju, the official said.

“The bottles kept coming,” said another administrative source who had official knowledge of the meeting.

The South Korean visitors to Pyongyang did not see one-on-one trackers that usually follow visitors in the North and were free to move about on the premises of the hotel, the first official added.

At the dinner on the first night, South Korean officials were able to observe the relationship between Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, said the second administrative source.

The source said Kim did not come across as overbearing, describing the spouses as appearing “equal”.

“They seemed to be quite close to one another and he didn’t seem like one of your conservative husbands.”

(Reporting by Christine Kim; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

U.S. wary of North Korea weapons advances while talks take place

FILE PHOTO - Intercontinental ballistic missiles are seen at a grand military parade celebrating the 70th founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, in this photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) February 9, 2018. KCNA/via REUTERS

By Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea could buy time to build up and refine its nuclear arsenal, including a warhead able to survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, if it manages to drag out any talks with Washington, U.S. officials and experts say.

Even if North Korea freezes nuclear detonations and missile tests during such talks – as South Korea has said Pyongyang offered to do – there is plenty of other technical work it could pursue while diplomatic efforts are under way, they say.

Such work could include completing development of a re-entry vehicle that can deliver a nuclear weapon, production of rocket frames, engines and mobile launchers and increasing the output of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for bomb-making.

“North Korea can be expected to proceed on all these things … unless an agreement freezes or stops these activities, something unlikely in the short run,” said David Albright, a nuclear non-proliferation expert who heads Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security.

President Donald Trump has said Pyongyang seems “sincere” in its offer of talks, but some in Washington are wary that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be using it as a stalling tactic for further weapons development – especially of a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland – and to seek relief from tough international sanctions.

U.S. intelligence officials have said Kim is only months away from being able to mount such a strike, while some experts say he may already have the basic capability, even if it remains untested.

The Trump administration must weigh such risks, including North Korea’s history of reneging on commitments, in deciding whether to go to the negotiating table, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Proponents of engagement, including Joel Wit, a senior fellow at Washington’s U.S.-Korea Institute, said the fact that North Korea was unlikely to agree to a complete freeze of activity should not be an obstacle.

“These programs are going to continue, but if we have a suspension of nuclear tests and missile tests, that’s a good first step here. It’s better than not having one,” he said.

U.S. officials said Trump would be prepared to quickly pull the plug on diplomacy if it becomes obvious that Pyongyang is just trying to drag out talks.

One administration official said that while it was unclear how long Trump might keep the negotiating window open, it would likely be evident in months “if North Korea is just playing us.”

RE-ENTRY VEHICLE CHALLENGE

Either way, U.S. officials and experts agree there is value in getting North Korea to put its testing on hold as launches and detonations are vital to developing reliable weapons.

North Korea has tested dozens of missiles of various types in the past two years, including one launch of its largest-ever intercontinental ballistic missile, which is theoretically capable of hitting anywhere in the United States, on Nov. 29. There have since been no more tests.

South Korean envoys, who met Kim in Pyongyang this week and who are due in Washington to brief U.S. officials on Thursday, said he offered to suspend all nuclear and missile tests while conducting talks with the United States.

They said Kim also expressed a willingness to denuclearize, something he previously declared non-negotiable, if his country’s security was guaranteed.

U.S. and South Korean officials worry that North Korea will ultimately lay down impossible demands in talks – such as the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea – and once diplomacy fails, emerge as an even greater threat than before.

Perhaps North Korea’s biggest challenge, experts say, is to show it can produce a re-entry vehicle robust enough to prevent a nuclear warhead burning up when it hurtles back into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Some of that work can be done on the ground, although a live test will eventually be needed as North Korea has never flown a missile at a trajectory that would simulate a long-range flight, experts say.

U.S. officials and experts believe North Korea also needs more time to create facilities capable of mass-producing missiles, engines and other components – a challenge to any country even without the constraints of stringent international sanctions.

To create a credible deterrent to the United States, North Korea would have to show it has the ability to launch multiple missiles at once to circumvent U.S. anti-missile defenses in the event of war.

It also needs additional transporter-erector launchers, or TELs, to enable it to fire missiles from hastily established positions less vulnerable to detection and attack than permanent launch sites.

At the same time, negotiations are unlikely to stop North Korea from continuing to seek materials and help from outside the country for its weapons programs.

“North Korea needs considerable outside help to outfit and sustain its missile and nuclear production,” Albright said. “Keeping the pressure up and implementing sanctions and export controls better is critical whatever happens.”

(Additional reporting by John Walcott; Editing by Mary Milliken and Peter Cooney)