Donald Trump hints at longer path for North Korea to de-nuke
Even by President Donald Trump’s mercurial standards, it was a quick shift. A week after abruptly canceling his historic summit with Kim Jong Un, Trump announced it was back on — and in the process appeared to accede to a key North Korean demand. Beyond the symbolism of Friday’s Oval Office meeting between Trump and Kim Yong Chol — the most senior North Korean official to step inside the White House in 18 years — Trump signaled a subtle change in his administration’s approach toward the goal of getting the pariah nation to give up its nuclear weapons. U.S. officials have previously been calling for North Korea to abandon its nukes rapidly, with the expectation of getting benefits afterward in the form of security assurances, sanctions relief and the opportunity to boost its meager economy. But as he spoke to reporters Friday, Trump repeatedly referred to the June 12 summit in Singapore — a first between the leaders of the U.S. and North Korea — as the start of a “process,” and said it was likely that more than one meeting would be necessary to bring about his goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. “June 12th, we’ll be in Singapore,” Trump said after his lengthy goodbye with Kim Yong Chol, a former North Korean military intelligence chief, whom he escorted to a black SUV. “It will be a beginning. I don’t say and I’ve never said it happens in one meeting. You’re talking about years of hostility; years of problems; years of, really, hatred between so many different nations. But I think you’re going to have a very positive result in the end.” Trump gave no indication of what kind of timetable he might have in mind for getting North Korea to abandon a weapons program it views as a guarantee for the survival of its authoritarian regime. Still, his comments marked a sea change from the views expressed weeks earlier by his national security adviser John Bolton, who was notably absent from Friday’s meeting. Bolton, who before taking office in April advocated military action against North Korea, had pointed to the disarmament of Libya in 2003 and 2004 in exchange for sanctions relief as a model for a possible deal with North Korea. For the North, that was a deeply provocative comparison, because Libyan autocrat Moammar Gadhafi was killed following U.S.-supported military action in his country about seven years after giving up his fledgling nuclear program. Rather than surrender its program all at once as Gadhafi did, North Korea has repeatedly said it envisions a “progressive and synchronous” approach, where it gets benefits along the way. The latest expression of that came Thursday from Kim Jong Un himself when he met in Pyongyang with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In a dispatch Friday, North Korean state news agency cited Kim saying “he hoped that the DPRK-U.S. relations and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula will be solved on a stage-by-stage basis.” DPRK refers to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. That sounds reminiscent of past U.S. efforts to negotiate North Korea’s disarmament with incentives of aid since the mid-1990s — efforts that have ultimately failed. The Trump administration has often said it can’t afford to repeat those mistakes because of the threat that North Korean nuclear-tipped missiles now pose to the continental U.S. But there’s always been doubt about whether it was realistic to expect instant results — both because of North Korea’s negotiating position and the scale and sophistication of its weapons program. This week, Stanford University experts — including nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker, who has inspected North Korea atomic facilities firsthand — proposed a denuclearization road map spanning 10 years. They warned that the idea of shipping the North’s nuclear weapons out of the country was “naive and dangerous.” North Korea has shown some goodwill: halting missile tests for six months so far, and last week demolishing key areas of its nuclear test site in front of international journalists. It has also released three American detainees. Now Trump, keen to strike a historic deal with a bitter U.S. adversary, appears eager for rapprochement to work. After meeting Kim Yong Chol, the president said he was putting new sanctions against the North on hold and doesn’t want to use the term “maximum pressure” anymore — referring to his signature policy to isolate Pyongyang economically and diplomatically. That may ease fears of renewed confrontation that fueled fears of war last year. But doubts linger about North Korea’s intentions. By hosting a top official from the North — whose trip to New York and Washington required waiving a travel ban against him — Trump has provided an early public relations victory for an isolated government eager for international recognition. He’s also generated considerable expectations about how the summit can herald a warm relationship between longstanding enemies. Hawks in the U.S. administration may also be concerned that Trump, who often complained during his election campaign about American military burdens overseas, would ultimately agree to a timetable for denuclearization by North Korea in exchange for withdrawing American troops from South Korea — removing a military tripwire to deter aggression by the North. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Both sides preparing as if U.S. – North Korea summit is a go
Rapid-fire diplomacy played out on two continents in advance of an “expected” summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the strengthening resolve coming after a series of high-risk, high-reward gambits by the two leaders. Officials wouldn’t say that the June 12 Singapore summit was back on, but preparations on both sides of the Pacific proceeded as if it were. Two weeks of hard-nosed negotiating, including a communications blackout by the North and a public cancellation by the U.S., appeared to be paying off as the two sides engaged in their most substantive talks to date about the meeting. Trump tweeted Tuesday that he had a “great team” working on the summit, confirming that top North Korean official Kim Yong Chol was headed to New York for talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In addition, teams of U.S. officials have arrived at the Korean Demilitarized Zone and in Singapore to prepare for the meeting. “Solid response to my letter, thank you!” tweeted Trump. He announced he had decided to “terminate” the summit last week in an open letter to Kim that stressed American military might, but also left the door cracked for future communication. White House officials characterized the letter as a negotiating tactic, designed to bring the North back to the table after a provocative statement, skipped planning talks and ignored phone calls. But aides almost immediately suggested the meeting could still get back on track. And after a suitably conciliatory statement from North Korea, Trump said the same. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that since the letter, “the North Koreans have been engaging” with the U.S. Trump views the meeting as a legacy-defining opportunity to make the nuclear deal that has evaded others, but he pledged to walk away from the meeting if he believed the North wasn’t serious about discussing dismantling its nuclear program. U.S. officials cast the on-again, off-again drama as in keeping with Trump’s deal-making style, and reflective of the technically still-warring leaders testing each other. In his book “The Art of the Deal,” Trump wrote: “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have.” After the North’s combative statements, there was debate inside the Trump administration about whether it marked a real turn to belligerence or a feint to see how far Kim Jong Un could push the U.S. in the lead-up to the talks. Trump had mused that Kim’s “attitude” had changed after the North Korean’s surprise visit to China two weeks ago, suggesting China was pushing Kim away from the table. Trump’s letter, the aides said, was designed to pressure the North on the international stage for appearing to have cold feet. White House officials maintain that Trump was hopeful the North was merely negotiating but that he was prepared for the letter to mark the end of the two-month flirtation. Instead, the officials said, it brought both sides to the table with increasing seriousness, as they work through myriad logistical and policy decisions to keep June 12 a viable option for the summit. The flurry of diplomatic activity intensified with Kim Yong Chol’s appearance at the Beijing airport Wednesday. South Korea-based Yonhap News cited diplomatic sources as saying Kim was on an Air China flight that departed in the afternoon, and U.S. officials familiar with planning have said he was scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday. Kim is a former military intelligence chief and now a vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee. He will be the highest-level North Korean official to travel to the United States since 2000, when late National Defense Commission First Vice Chairman Jo Myong Rok visited Washington, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said. Pompeo has traveled to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, twice in recent weeks for meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and has said there is a “shared understanding” between the two sides about what they hope to achieve. Meanwhile, a team of American diplomats is holding preparatory discussions with North Korean officials at the DMZ. The group first met with its counterparts Sunday, and was seen leaving a Seoul hotel on Tuesday, but it was unclear whether they went to Panmunjom, a village that straddles the border inside the DMZ. The U.S. officials are led by Sung Kim, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, who formerly was the U.S. ambassador to Seoul and a top negotiator with North Korea in past nuclear talks. It includes senior officials with the National Security Council and the Pentagon. The White House emphasized that it has remained in close contact with South Korean and Japanese officials as preparations for the talks continue. Sanders said Trump will host Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan on June 7 to coordinate their thinking ahead of the summit. Trump hosted South Korean President Moon Jae-in last week. Moon, who has lobbied hard for nuclear negotiations between Trump and Kim Jong Un, held a surprise meeting with the North Korean leader Saturday in an effort to keep the summit alive. South Korean media also reported that a North Korean delegation arrived in Singapore on Monday night, where other U.S. officials, led by White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, are preparing for the summit. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
