US-North Korea reconciliation battle already lost: Intl. lawyer

July 04

17:52 2019

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International Lawyer Barry Grossman believes that a recent US-North Korea agreement to resume nuclear talks is already a lost battle for Washington as Pyongyang refuses to disarm.

“We see President Trump trying to take the position of the chump, the good guy chump, who wants to be friends with his counterpart in North Korea all the while the State Department right now [is] in the hands of a handful of bad men really trying to ramp up tensions,” he said.

“The problem of course is that this is a battle that the United States has already lost. The problem is North Korea has nuclear weapons. It is a fait accompli, if you like, and therefore it is relatively illegal in terms of invoking the usual military intervention strategy that the US can do without being prepared to pay the political price of a nuclear conflagration in the Korean peninsula,” Grossman added.

This comes days after the countries' leaders held a historic meeting in the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) which divides the two Koreas. Following talks that lasted for almost an hour, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un agreed to set up teams to resume stalled negotiations on denuclearization.