(Bloomberg) -- North Korea's chief negotiator welcomed President Donald Trump's “wise political decision” to sack a “nasty troublemaker,” according to a state media report that appears to be opening a way for the resumption of denuclearization talks.
The negotiator, Kim Myong Gil, was quoted as praising the Trump administration for approaching U.S.-North Korea relations in a “more practical point of view” by removing the “troublemaker who used to face everything out of his anachronistic way of thinking.”
Kim was apparently referring to former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who departed the White House last week. Bolton said he resigned, while Trump said he had fired him. The report from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency didn't specifically mention Bolton by name.
“If the former shilly-shallying U.S. administrations with a rigid way of thinking were still in power, an uncontrollable situation would doubtless be created on the Korean peninsula, and no one would deny that this would come to be a direct threat to the U.S. security,” Kim is quoted as saying.
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Kim also said Trump's comments on “the unfairness of the Libya model of giving up nuclear weapons” was intriguing as it may lead to “gradual process” of building trust between the two countries. Bolton had advocated for a “Libya model” of denuclearization, under which the regime ships its nuclear arsenal out of the country in return for security guarantees and sanctions relief. North Korea, meanwhile, has rejected that model and demanded the partial lifting of economic sanctions in exchange for smaller steps toward denuclearization.
“I would like to keep myself optimistic about the results of the upcoming DPRK-U.S. negotiations with the anticipation that the U.S. side would come out to the talks with a proper calculation method,” Kim said, according to the KCNA report, referring to North Korea.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jihye Lee in Seoul at jlee2352@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Niluksi Koswanage at nkoswanage@bloomberg.net, ;Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net, Peter Pae, Karen Leigh
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