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By Kim Yoo-chul
VATICAN CITY ― President Moon Jae-in will hold summits this week with European leaders, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, to share his vision for North Korea.
On Friday, he will head to Brussels, Belgium, to attend the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and then to Copenhagen, Denmark, for the P4G (Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030) Summit.
President Moon is using his nine-day European tour to push a consensus-building process aimed at helping North Korea get sanctions relief and thus, according to him, moving the peace process forward, Cheong Wa Dae officials said.
Receiving broad support from European countries will provide a "great impetus" for the denuclearization process, they added.
"It's less likely the planned summit with May will make a huge difference as seen by the Moon-Macron summit, but we want her to think about on why sanctions relief makes sense in addressing the nuclear issue," a senior Cheong Wa Dae official told The Korea Times.
It will be the second summit between Moon and May after they agreed to seek a peaceful resolution of the North's nuclear issue last year on the sidelines of their participation at the United Nations General Assembly.
Any sanctions relief will only go into effect it gets the green light from all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) ― the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France. Russia and China are North Korea's longtime backers and they are supporting Seoul in terms of the need to lift sanctions on the North.
Britain's stance toward the North's nuclear issue is providing "some rewards" is possible only after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un comes clean on his regime's nuclear capabilities.
What's interesting is that the Moon-May summit comes at the request of Britain.
"The upcoming Moon-May summit will be used as a consensus-gathering process with the leaders committing themselves to the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) of North Korea before sanctions can be scaled back, but Moon will speak to May about the need for some sanctions relief to ensure the North is on the right track to denuclearize," said another official from the presidential office.
Citing the use of chemical weapons in Salisbury in an attempted murder early this year, the official said the situation was "not looking good" for Moon to get concrete support from May for his sanctions relief initiative. Also, May doesn't want to break with the United States on the North Korean issue. Washington is still maintaining its hard-line stance toward the North.
Concerns are Moon's peace drive may face a setback if the denuclearization talks remain deadlocked. Washington recently warned South Korean banks operating in New York and businesses that plan to invest or develop cooperation with the North that they will be considered as parties breaching the UNSC sanctions.
