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North Korea to bring up US troop pullout from South Korea at talks with US — expert

According to the Russian expert, Washington has a powerful bargaining chip in the form of sanctions

MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. North Korea is most likely to bring up US troop pullout from South Korea during talks with US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun, Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for US and Canadian Studies Valery Garbuzov told TASS on Tuesday.

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"North Korea is most likely to bring up US troop pullout from South Korea," he said. "But I don’t think that Washington will withdraw troops. For the United States, maintaining dialogue means making North Korean behave more or less adequately while keeping US troops on the peninsula," he added.

According to Garbuzov, Washington has a powerful bargaining chip in the form of sanctions. "Sanctions are the number one issue for North Korea," the expert pointed out. "Easing sanctions, providing access to technologies and markets are strong arguments," he added. "North Korea has been going through changes - it is not about the political system, but the economic system is changing and I think that it is a very strong impetus for Pyongyang that has come to understand it is not a good thing to live under siege," Garbuzov noted.

"It seems that since Donald Trump took office, the US approach to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula has changed and now Washington is more inclined to search for a solution. The main problem is what to do with the North Korean nuclear program. There is a long way to go before the issue is resolved but if North Korea agrees to receive inspections and put its nuclear potential and missile launches under international control, it will be quite a success," the expert said.

Preparations for summit

The US Department of State announced earlier that Biegun "will travel to Pyongyang on February 6 for meetings with his DPRK counterpart Kim Hyok Chol to prepare for the President’s second summit with Chairman Kim and advance further progress on the commitments the President and Chairman Kim made in Singapore: complete denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula."

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