Donald Trump suggests summit with Kim Jong Un could be delayed
President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that a planned historic meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un could be delayed, saying the summit “may not work out for June 12.” Trump raised the possibility that the meeting could be pushed back during a White House meeting with South Korea President Moon Jae-in as the two leaders sought to coordinate strategy as concerns mounted over ensuring a successful outcome for the North Korea summit. Trump told reporters: “If it doesn’t happen, maybe it happens later,” reflecting recent setbacks to bring about reconciliation between the two Koreas. The North pulled out of planned peace talks with the South last week, objecting to long-scheduled joint military exercises between U.S. and the Republic of Korea forces, and it threatened to abandon the planned Trump-Kim meeting over the U.S. insistence on denuclearizing the peninsula. Moon said in the Oval Office that the “fate and the future” of the Korean Peninsula hinged on the talks, telling the U.S. president that they were “one step closer” to the dream of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. “There are certain conditions that we want,” Trump said. He added if they aren’t met, “we won’t have the meeting.” He declined to elaborate on those conditions. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
US has a daunting to-do list to get ready for NKorea summit
Who sits where? What’s on the agenda? Will they eat together? What’s the security plan? President Donald Trump and his team have a daunting to-do list to work through as they prepare for next month’s expected summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump’s plan to meet with Kim may have come as a surprise decision, but his team hopes to leave nothing to chance when they come together in Singapore. They’re gaming out policy plans, negotiating tactics, even menu items. “We’re working on the details, the actual blocking and tackling at the meeting,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” ″We have been working on them for weeks.” With two unpredictable leaders, it’s hard to anticipate every possibility. But White House aides are expecting hard-ball negotiating tactics — already in evidence this week as the North Koreans cast fresh doubt on the sit-down. Leader summits on this level are a massive undertaking. Much like icebergs, only a small fraction of the work is visible above the waterline. And when the meeting involves the heads of two technically still-warring states, the list of logistical concerns expands, including sensitive items like the number and deployment of security officers. Officials on both sides are still determining the format for the meeting or meetings, whether Trump and Kim will share a meal, and the extent of any one-on-one interactions. All of that comes as the U.S. formulates its strategies for the talks, including what the U.S. is prepared to give up and how precisely to define “denuclearization” on the Korean Peninsula — Trump’s stated goal. “I would say there are hundreds if not thousands of hours put into summit preparations,” said Patrick McEachern, a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former State Department official. Scott Mulhauser, a former chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, said that in the leadup to summit meetings, staffs try to anticipate the various negotiating positions their counterparts might take, adding that “if you’re not gaming that out, you’re not preparing adequately.” Trump is relying heavily on his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, in preparing for the summit. Pompeo has met with Kim twice in Pyongyang, once as secretary of state and once as CIA chief, and has spent more time with the reclusive leader than any other American official. The amount of face time Pompeo has had with Kim rivals even that of most Asian leaders, apart from the Chinese. Pompeo assembled a working group to handle negotiations with North Korea led by a retired senior CIA official with deep experience in the region. That team, based at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, remains the center of the administration’s North Korea expertise. Planning for the summit started quickly after Trump announced on Twitter his plans to meet with Kim, but kicked into higher gear after John Bolton became Trump’s national security adviser last month. In addition to Pompeo’s two trips to Pyongyang, U.S. officials have also been coordinating with the North Koreans through what’s known as the “New York channel” — North Korean diplomats posted to their country’s mission to the United Nations. A key question is the format for the meeting if the two countries are able to proceed to full-fledged nuclear negotiations, U.S. officials have said. That includes decisions about whether to keep the talks limited to the U.S. and North Korea or whether to bring other governments into the process, such as South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. Also key is what the U.S. will negotiate away. “One thing that is unclear to us is what the U.S. is willing to negotiate in exchange for North Korea’s promises on denuclearization,” said Jean Lee, director of the North Korea program at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former Associated Press bureau chief in Pyongyang. “The North Koreans are going to be armed and very ready to negotiate. The Trump administration needs to be ready as well.” One initial hurdle that Pompeo managed to clear during his second visit to Pyongyang was the venue for the summit. North Korea was adamant that Kim not be put in any kind of situation where his security could be at risk, U.S. officials said. North Korean officials pushed very hard for the meeting to be in Pyongyang, so Kim would not have to leave the country and they could have 100 percent control over access and communications, according to the officials. When North Korea objected to Trump’s preferred choice of the demilitarized zone on the border between North and South Korea, the U.S. countered with Singapore. Some White House officials also opposed the DMZ choice, believing the optics on Korean rapprochement would distract from the focus on denuclearization. U.S. officials said they believed one reason the North Koreans agreed to Singapore was that Kim had just returned from a successful trip to China the day before Pompeo arrived for his second visit. Many analysts, including U.S. officials, believe that Kim’s flight to the Chinese port of Dalian — the first trip abroad by aircraft by a North Korean leader in decades — was likely a test of the country’s ability to safely transport Kim by air. Kim’s previous trips to China had all been by train, as was the custom of his father. The North formally signed off on Singapore while Pompeo was in Pyongyang. Even before Trump announced the summit site by tweet a day after Pompeo’s return, White House officials who traveled with Pompeo to Pyongyang were already on the ground in Singapore to begin working out summit logistics. Very few people have had much direct contact with the North Koreans, so there are few people for the Trump administration to check with for guidance. Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor and U.N. ambassador who has negotiated with the North Koreans, had one suggestion. He said that in the meeting setting, the North Koreans will be very formal, so building a rapport between
North Korea threatens to cancel Trump-Kim summit over drills
North Korea on Wednesday threatened to scrap a historic summit next month between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and U.S. President Donald Trump, saying it has no interest in a “one-sided” affair meant to pressure the North to abandon its nuclear weapons. The warning by North Korea’s first vice foreign minister came hours after the country abruptly canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea to protest U.S.-South Korean military exercises that the North has long claimed are an invasion rehearsal. The surprise moves appear to cool what had been an unusual flurry of outreach from a country that last year conducted a provocative series of weapons tests that had many fearing the region was on the edge of war. Analysts said it’s unlikely that North Korea intends to scuttle all diplomacy. More likely, they said, is that it wants to gain leverage ahead of the talks between Kim and Trump, scheduled for June 12 in Singapore. In Washington, Trump said the U.S. hasn’t been notified about the North Korean threat. “We haven’t seen anything. We haven’t heard anything. We will see what happens,” he said as he welcomed the president of Uzbekistan to the White House. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration is “still hopeful” that the summit will take place, and that threats from North Korea to scrap the meeting were “something that we fully expected.” She said Trump is “ready for very tough negotiations,” adding that “if they want to meet, we’ll be ready and if they don’t that’s OK.” She said if there is no meeting, the U.S. would “continue with the campaign of maximum pressure” against the North. North Korean first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried by state media that “we are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting.” He criticized recent comments by Trump’s top security adviser, John Bolton, and other U.S. officials who have said the North should follow the “Libyan model” of nuclear disarmament and provide a “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement.” He also took issue with U.S. views that the North should fully relinquish its biological and chemical weapons. Some analysts say bringing up Libya, which dismantled its rudimentary nuclear program in the 2000s in exchange for sanctions relief, jeopardizes progress in negotiations with the North. Kim Jong Un took power weeks after former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s gruesome death at the hands of rebel forces amid a popular uprising in October 2011. The North has frequently used Gadhafi’s death to justify its own nuclear development in the face of perceived U.S. threats. The North’s warning Wednesday fits a past North Korean pattern of raising tensions to bolster its positions ahead of negotiations with Washington and Seoul. But the country also has a long history of scrapping deals with its rivals at the last minute. In 2013, North Korea abruptly canceled reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War just days before they were scheduled to begin to protest what it called rising animosities ahead of joint drills between Seoul and Washington. In 2012, the North conducted a prohibited long-range rocket launch weeks after it agreed to suspend weapons tests in return for food assistance. On Wednesday, senior officials from the two Koreas were to sit down at a border village to discuss how to implement their leaders’ recent agreements to reduce military tensions along their heavily fortified border and improve overall ties. But hours before the meeting was to start, the North informed the South that it would “indefinitely suspend” the talks, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. In a pre-dawn dispatch, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, called the two-week Max Thunder drills, which began Monday and reportedly include about 100 aircraft, an “intended military provocation” and an “apparent challenge” to last month’s summit between Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, when the leaders met at the border in their countries’ third summit talks since their formal division in 1948. “The United States must carefully contemplate the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit amid the provocative military ruckus that it’s causing with South Korean authorities,” the North said. “We’ll keenly monitor how the United States and South Korean authorities will react.” Kim Dong-yub, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said the North isn’t trying to undermine the Trump-Kim talks. The North’s reaction is more like a “complaint over Trump’s way of playing the good cop and bad cop game with (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo and Bolton,” he said. Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which is responsible for inter-Korean affairs, called North Korea’s move “regrettable” and urged a quick return to talks. The Defense Ministry said the drills with the United States would go on as planned. Annual military drills between Washington and Seoul have long been a major source of contention between the Koreas, and analysts have wondered whether their continuation would hurt the detente that, since an outreach by Kim in January, has replaced the insults and threats of war. Much larger springtime drills took place last month without the North’s typically fiery condemnation or accompanying weapons tests, though Washington and Seoul toned down those exercises. The KCNA dispatch said the U.S. aircraft mobilized for the drills include nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and stealth F-22 fighter jets, two of the U.S. military assets it has previously said are aimed at launching nuclear strikes on the North. Seoul has said F-22s are involved in the drills, but has not confirmed whether B-52s are taking part. In Washington, the U.S. State Department emphasized that Kim had previously indicated he understood the need and purpose of the U.S. continuing its long-planned exercises with South Korea. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. had not
Mike Pompeo: NKorea needs US security assurances for nuke pact
The United States is offering assurances to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as it seeks to put in motion the potential for a sweeping nuclear deal ahead of President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with the North Korean leader. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. will need to “provide security assurances” to Kim if they’re able to forge an agreement. Pompeo met with Kim last week in North Korea, helping set the stage for Trump’s historic meeting with Kim in Singapore on June 12. Trump has set an ambitious goal for North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons in a permanent and verifiable way. In return, the U.S. is willing to help the impoverished nation strengthen its economy. Pompeo was asked on “Fox News Sunday” whether the U.S. was in effect telling Kim he could stay in power if he met the U.S. demands. Pompeo said: “We will have to provide security assurances, to be sure.” The top U.S. diplomat did not elaborate, but his comment could refer to the type of assurances North Korea has sought in the past. A statement issued during international negotiations with North Korea in 2005 over its nuclear weapons development said the “United States affirmed that it has no nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula and has no intention to attack or invade (North Korea) with nuclear or conventional weapons.” The North has said it needs nuclear weapons to counter what it believes is a U.S. effort to strangle its economy and overthrow the Kim government. “Make no mistake about it, America’s interest here is preventing the risk that North Korea will launch a nuclear weapon into L.A. or Denver or to the very place we’re sitting here this morning,” Pompeo said from Washington. “That’s our objective, that’s the end state the president has laid out and that’s the mission that he sent me on this past week, to put us on the trajectory to go achieve that.” Pressed in a separate interview on whether the U.S. would seek regime change, Pompeo said “only time will tell how these negotiations will proceed.” “The president uses language that says ’we’ll see,’” Pompeo told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” ″The American leadership under President Trump has its eyes wide open.” North Korea said Saturday that all of the tunnels at the country’s northeastern nuclear test site will be destroyed by explosion in less than two weeks, ahead of Kim’s summit with Trump. Observation and research facilities and ground-based guard units will also be removed, the North said. Pompeo praised it as “one step along the way.” John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, described the types of steps that North Korea would need to take as part of a denuclearization process, including the potential involvement of a processing center in Tennessee. “The implementation of the decision means getting rid of all the nuclear weapons, dismantling them, taking them to Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” Bolton said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” ″It means getting rid of the uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities,” adding the process would also need to address North Korea’s ballistic missiles. “I don’t think anybody believes you’re going to sign the complete ending of the nuclear program in one day. But we are also very much interested in operationalizing the commitment as quickly as possible,” Bolton said. Bolton said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” that North Korea should not “look for economic aid from us. I think what the prospect for North Korea is to become a normal nation, to behave and interact with the rest of the world the way South Korea does.” “The prospect for North Korea is unbelievably strong if they’ll commit to denuclearization. That’s what the president is going to say,” he said. Pompeo said private-sector Americans could help rebuild North Korea’s energy grid and develop the country’s infrastructure. He described the possibility of American agriculture being used to “support North Korea so they can eat meat and have healthy lives.” South Korea has said Kim has shown an interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons in return for economic benefits. But it remains unclear if Kim would ever fully relinquish the weapons he probably views as his only guarantee of survival. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
U.S. hopes North Korea will become close partner, Mike Pompeo says
The United States aspires to have North Korea as a “close partner” and not an enemy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, noting that the U.S. has often in history become good friends with former adversaries. Pompeo said he had told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un of that hope during his brief visit to Pyongyang earlier this week, during which he finalized details of the June 12 summit between Kim and President Donald Trump and secured the release of three Americans imprisoned in the country. He said his talks with Kim on Wednesday had been “warm,” ″constructive” and “good” and that he made clear that if North Korea gets rid of its nuclear weapons in a permanent and verifiable way, the U.S. is willing to help the impoverished nation boost its economy and living stands to levels like those in prosperous South Korea. “We had good conversations about the histories of our two nations, the challenges that we have had between us,” Pompeo told reporters at a news conference Friday with South Korea’s visiting foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha. “We talked about the fact that America has often in history had adversaries who we are now close partners with and our hope that we could achieve the same with respect to North Korea.” He did not mention other adversaries by name, but Pompeo and others have often noted that the U.S. played a major role in rebuilding Japan and the European axis powers in the wake of World War II. With U.S. help, those countries recovered from the devastation of conflict. “If North Korea takes bold action to quickly denuclearize, the United States is prepared to work with North Korea to achieve prosperity on the par with our South Korean friends,” he said. Kang praised the upcoming meeting between Trump and Kim in Singapore as an “historic” opportunity, but added a few notes of skepticism as well. Amid concerns that North Korea will demand the U.S. withdraw its troops from neighboring South Korea, Kang emphasized that the U.S. military presence there must be “a matter for the U.S.-ROK alliance first and foremost,” using an acronym for South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea. She said the U.S. troop presence in the South for the past 65 years has played a “crucial role for deterrence,” peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. Therefore, she said, any change in the size of the U.S. forces in South Korea should not be on the table at the summit. “The next few weeks will be critical, requiring air-tight coordination between our two countries,” Kang said, noting that South Korean President Moon Jae-in would be in Washington to see Trump later this month. Since Trump announced plans to hold a summit with Kim, questions have been raised continually about whether the two leaders have the same objective in mind when they speak about “denuclearization.” To the U.S., that means the North giving up the nuclear weapons it has already built. But North Korea has said it’s willing to talk now because it’s already succeeded in becoming a nuclear-armed state, fueling skepticism that the North would truly be willing to give those weapons up. Pompeo said there would need to be “complete” and “verifiable” denuclearization that would remove North Korea as a threat to the South, the United States and the rest of the world. He said a major inspection and monitoring regime would be required to ensure the North’s compliance. “I think there is complete agreement about what the ultimate objectives are,” Pompeo said, though he declined to offer more detail. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Detainees freed in North Korea, returning to US with Mike Pompeo
Three Americans detained in North Korea for more than a year are on their way back to the U.S. with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday in the latest sign of improving relations between the two longtime adversary nations. Trump said on Twitter that Pompeo was “in the air” and was with “the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting.” The president, who had been hinting about an imminent release, said he would greet them at Andrews Air Force Base at 2 a.m. Thursday. The release of the detainees came as Pompeo visited North Korea on Wednesday to finalize plans for a historic summit between Trump and the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump said on Twitter that there had been a “good meeting with Kim Jong Un,” adding: “Date & Place set.” North Korea had accused Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak Song and Tony Kim, all Korean-Americans, of anti-state activities but their arrests were widely seen as politically motivated and had compounded the dire state of relations over the isolated nation’s nuclear weapons. The family of Tony Kim thanked “all those” who worked for his return and also credited Trump for engaging directly with North Korea. “Mostly we thank God for Tony’s safe return,” the family said in a statement, and they urged people to “continue to pray for the people of North Korea and for the release of all who are still being held.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Trump viewed the release “as a positive gesture of goodwill.” The release capped a dramatic day of diplomacy in Pyongyang for Pompeo. After his 90-minute meeting with Kim Jong Un, he gave reporters a fingers-crossed sign when asked about the prisoners as he returned to his hotel. But it was only after a North Korean emissary arrived a bit later to inform him that the release was confirmed. The three had been held for periods ranging between one and two years. They were the latest in a series of Americans who have been detained by North Korea in recent years for seemingly small offenses and typically freed when senior U.S. officials or statesmen personally visited to bail them out. The last American to be released before this, college student Otto Warmbier, died in June 2017, days after he was repatriated to the U.S. with severe brain damage. Warmbier was arrested by North Korean authorities in January 2016. He was accused of stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor. His parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, accusing the government of torturing and killing their son. Of the newly released detainees, Kim Dong Chul, a South Korean-born U.S. citizen, had been held the longest. The former Virginia resident was sentenced in April 2016 to 10 years in prison with hard labor after being convicted of espionage. He reportedly ran a trade and hotel service company in Rason, a special economic zone on North Korea’s border with Russia. The other two detainees hadn’t been tried. Kim Hak Song worked in agricultural development at an experimental farm run by the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, or PUST. The university is the only privately funded college in North Korea and was founded in 2010 with donations from Christian groups. He was detained last May for alleged anti-state activities. Tony Kim, who also uses the name Kim Sang-duk, was detained in April 2017 at the Pyongyang airport. He taught accounting at PUST. He was accused of committing unspecified criminal acts intended to overthrow the government. Pompeo, in his visit, discussed the agenda for a potential Trump-Kim Jong Un summit in his meeting with Kim Yong Chol, the vice chairman of the central committee of North Korea’s ruling party. The two sides plan to meet once again to finalize details. No specifics were offered although officials said Singapore is emerging as the most likely venue. The unprecedented meeting has been slated for this month or early June. Kim Yong Chol noted improved relations between North and South Korea and pushed back against the idea that U.S. pressure led to the likely summit. “This is not a result of sanctions that have been imposed from outside,” he said. That contradicted Trump, who has said repeatedly that his pressure tactics brought North Korea to the negotiating table. Pompeo’s trip, his second to North Korea this year, had not been publicly disclosed when he flew out of Washington late Monday aboard an Air Force jetliner. Trump announced the mission Tuesday afternoon as he laid out his case for withdrawing from a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, another bitter U.S. adversary. Accompanying Pompeo were a few senior aides, a security detail and two journalists — one from The Associated Press and one from The Washington Post. Pompeo, who first traveled to North Korea as CIA chief in early April, is only the second sitting secretary of state to visit the reclusive nation with which the U.S. is still technically at war. The first was Madeleine Albright, who went in 2000 as part of an unsuccessful bid to arrange a meeting between then-President Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il. A Trump-Kim meeting seemed a remote possibility just a few months ago when the two leaders were trading threats and insults over North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests. But momentum for diplomacy built this year as North and South Korea moved to ease tensions, including the North sending a contingent to the Winter Olympics in the South. The Koreas’ leaders’ held their own summit last month. In March, Trump unexpectedly accepted an offer of talks from Kim after the North Korean dictator agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests and discuss “denuclearization.” According to South Korea, Kim says he’s willing to give up his nukes if the United States commits to a formal end to the Korean War and pledges
Like a showman, Donald Trump suggests Demilitarized Zone for ‘big event’
Like a consummate showman, President Donald Trump began rolling the drum Monday for his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, suggesting the “big event” take place in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Koreas. That’s where Kim just met his South Korean counterpart. But Trump said that the Southeast Asian city state of Singapore was also in the running to host what few would have predicted when nuclear tensions were soaring last year — the first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the United States and North Korea. While policy experts, and even his own national security adviser, voice skepticism that North Korea is sincere about giving up its nuclear efforts, Trump sounds like he’s gearing up for a date with history, and clearly wants the backdrop to be just right. First by Twitter, and then at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he likes the idea of going to the southern side of the demarcation line that separates the Koreas, where South Korean President Moon Jae-in met Kim on Friday. “There’s something that I like about it because you are there, you are actually there,” Trump said. “If things work out there’s a great celebration to be had on the site, not in a third-party country.” There’s been much speculation about where Trump and Kim might meet. Countries in Europe and Southeast Asia, in Mongolia and even a ship in international waters have all been suggested as possible venues. Monday was the first time that Trump had publicly named potential locations. His planned meeting with Kim will be the crucial follow-up to the summit between Kim and Moon on Friday where they pledged to seek a formal end this year to the Korean War — a conflict that was halted in 1953 by an armistice and not a peace treaty, leaving the two sides technically at war. They also committed to ridding the peninsula of nuclear weapons. Former reality television star Trump now has to help turn the Korean leaders’ bold but vague vision for peace into reality. Undaunted, he gave the impression Monday that governments were vying to host his face-to-face with Kim and share in the attention it would bring. “Everybody wants us. It has the chance to be a big event,” the president said on a bright spring day in Washington, alongside Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he’d just met at the White House. “The United States has never been closer to potentially have something happen with respect to the Korean Peninsula that can get rid of the nuclear weapons, can create so many good things, so many positive things, and peace and security for the world.” It wasn’t clear whether his enthusiasm was stirred by the South Korean president’s suggestion Monday that Trump could take the Nobel Peace Prize if the two Koreas win peace. Moon’s remark came when he deflected a question about whether he might win the award as one of his predecessors, Kim Dae-jung, did in 2000 after the first ever inter-Korean summit. The United States has reached aid-for-disarmament deals with North Korea before, but they’ve ultimately failed. The most enduring effort negotiated by the Bill Clinton administration in 1994 halted the North’s production of plutonium for nearly a decade. But it collapsed over suspicions that North Korea had a secret program to enrich uranium, giving it an alternative route to make fissile material for bombs. Trump’s recently installed national security adviser, John Bolton, who has in the past advocated military action against North Korea, reacted coolly Sunday to its reported willingness to give up nuclear programs if the United States commits to a formal end to the war and a pledges not to attack. “We’ve heard this before,” Bolton told CBS’ “Face the Nation,” adding that the U.S. wanted to see concrete action “not just rhetoric.” This year, Kim has already suspended his nuclear and missile tests. According to South Korean officials, he told Moon that he’s going to shut down his country’s only known nuclear testing site and allow experts and journalists to observe. Trump cited that prospect with approval on Monday, saying Kim is “talking about no research, no launches of ballistic missiles, no nuclear testing.” But as usual, the president left open the possibility of pulling the plug on talks, saying: “If it’s not a success, I will respectfully leave.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Kim Jong Un says he’ll give up nukes if U.S. vows not to attack
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told his South Korean counterpart at their historic summit that he would be willing to give up his nuclear weapons if the U.S. commits to a formal end to the Korean War and a pledge not to attack the North, Seoul officials said Sunday. Kim also vowed during his meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday to shut down the North’s nuclear test site in May and disclose the process to experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States, Seoul’s presidential office said. While there are lingering questions about whether North Korea will ever decide to fully relinquish its nukes as it heads into negotiations with the U.S., Kim’s comments amount to the North’s most specific acknowledgement yet that “denuclearization” would constitute surrendering its weapons. U.S. national security adviser John Bolton reacted coolly to word that Kim would abandon his weapons if the United States pledged not to invade. Asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” whether the U.S. would make such a promise, Bolton said: “Well, we’ve heard this before. This is — the North Korean propaganda playbook is an infinitely rich resource.” “What we want to see from them is evidence that it’s real and not just rhetoric,” he added. Seoul officials, who have shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington to broker talks between Kim and President Donald Trump that are expected in May or June, said Kim has expressed genuine interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons. But there has been skepticism because North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of “denuclearization” that bears no resemblance to the American definition. The North has long vowed to pursue nuclear development unless Washington removes its 28,500 troops from South Korea and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan. During their summit at a truce village on the border, Moon and Kim promised to work toward the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula but made no references to verification or timetables. Kim also expressed optimism about his meeting with Trump, Moon’s spokesman Yoon Young-chan said. “Once we start talking, the United States will know that I am not a person to launch nuclear weapons at South Korea, the Pacific or the United States,” Kim said, according to Yoon. Yoon also quoted Kim as saying: “If we maintain frequent meetings and build trust with the United States and receive promises for an end to the war and a non-aggression treaty, then why would we need to live in difficulty by keeping our nuclear weapons?” The Korean Peninsula technically remains in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War was halted with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The closing of the nuclear test site would be a dramatic but likely symbolic event to set up Kim’s summit with Trump. North Korea already announced this month that it has suspended all tests of nuclear devices and intercontinental ballistic missiles and plans to close its nuclear testing ground. Still, Adam Mount, a senior defense analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, said Kim’s comments were significant because they are his most explicit acknowledgement yet that denuclearization means surrendering his nuclear weapons. “Questions remain about whether Kim will agree to discuss other nuclear technology, fissile material and missiles. However, they imply a phased process with reciprocal concessions,” Mount said in an email. “It is not clear that the Trump administration will accept that kind of protracted program.” Analysts reacted with skepticism to Kim’s previously announced plan to close down the test site at Punggye-ri, saying the northernmost tunnel had already become too unstable to use for underground detonations anyway following the country’s sixth and most powerful test blast in September. In his conversation with Moon, Kim denied that he would be merely clearing out damaged goods, saying the site also has two new tunnels that are larger than previous testing facilities, Yoon said. Some analysts see Moon’s agreement with Kim at the summit as a disappointment, citing the lack of references to verification and timeframes and also the absence of a definition on what would constitute a “complete” denuclearization of the peninsula. But Patrick McEachern, a former State Department analyst now with the Washington-based Wilson Center, said it was still meaningful that Moon extracted a commitment from Kim to complete denuclearization, which marked a significant change from Kim’s previous public demand to expand his arsenal of nuclear weapons in number and quality. “The public conversation should now shift from speculation on whether North Korea would consider denuclearization to how South Korea and the United States can advance this denuclearization pledge in concrete steps in light of North Korea’s reciprocal demands for concrete steps toward an eventual peace agreement,” McEachern said in an email. North Korea has invited the outside world to witness the dismantling of its nuclear facilities before. In June 2008, international broadcasters were allowed to air the demolition of a cooling tower at the Nyongbyon reactor site, a year after the North reached an agreement with the U.S. and four other nations to disable its nuclear facilities in return for an aid package worth about $400 million. But the deal eventually collapsed after North Korea refused to accept U.S.-proposed verification methods, and the country went on to conduct its second nuclear test detonation in May 2009. Yoon said Kim also revealed plans to sync its time zone with South Korea’s. The Koreas had used the same time zone for decades before the North created its own “Pyongyang Time” in 2015 by setting the clock 30 minutes behind South Korea and Japan. Yoon said the North’s decision to return to Seoul’s time zone was aimed at facilitating communication with South Korea and the U.S. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump says ‘good relationship’ formed with North Korea
President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that his CIA chief secretly met with Kim Jong Un in North Korea and said “a good relationship was formed” heading into the adversaries’ anticipated summit. Mike Pompeo’s highly unusual talks took place “last week,” Trump tweeted, and “went smoothly,” with details about the presidential meeting within the next few months “being worked out now.” “Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!” Trump wrote while at his Florida estate, where he was hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Trump had disclosed on Tuesday that the U.S. and North Korea were holding direct talks at “extremely high levels” in preparation for a possible summit. He said five locations were under consideration for the meeting, which could take place by early June. Confirmation of Pompeo’s trip later came from two officials, who were not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Washington Post, which first reported the development, said it took place over Easter weekend — just over two weeks ago, shortly after Pompeo was nominated to become secretary of state. Kim’s offer for a summit was initially conveyed to Trump by South Korea last month, and the president shocked many by accepting it. U.S. officials indicated over the past two weeks that North Korea’s government had communicated directly with Washington that it was ready to discuss its nuclear weapons program. It would be the first-ever summit between the U.S. and North Korea during more than six decades of hostility since the Korean War. North Korea’s nuclear weapons and its capability to deliver them by ballistic missile pose a growing threat to the U.S. mainland. The U.S. and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic relations, complicating the arrangements for contacts between the two governments. It is not unprecedented for U.S. intelligence officials to serve as a conduit for communication with Pyongyang. In 2014, the then-director of U.S. national intelligence, James Clapper, secretly visited North Korea to bring back two American detainees. China, North Korea’s closest ally, said it welcomes direct contact and talks between the U.S. and North Korea after news emerged of Pompeo’s meeting with Kim. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Wednesday that Beijing hopes the two sides will work on a political resolution of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and set up a peace mechanism. The Koreas are technically still in a state of war after fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. At a Senate hearing last week on his nomination, Pompeo played down expectations for a breakthrough deal on ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program at the planned summit, but said it could lay the groundwork for a comprehensive agreement on denuclearization. “I’m optimistic that the United States government can set the conditions for that appropriately so that the president and the North Korean leader can have that conversation and will set us down the course of achieving a diplomatic outcome that America and the world so desperately need,” Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After a year of escalating tensions, when North Korea conducted nuclear and long-range missile tests that drew world condemnation, Kim has pivoted to international outreach. The young leader met China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing in late March, Kim’s first trip abroad since taking power six years ago. He is set to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the demilitarized zone between the rival Koreas on April 27. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump: Good chance NKorean leader will do ‘what is right’
President Donald Trump said Wednesday there’s “a good chance” that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will “do what is right for his people and for humanity” and make moves toward peace. In a pair of morning tweets, Trump says he received a message from Chinese President Xi Jinping that a meeting Xi had with Kim this week “went very well.” Trump says that according to Xi, the North Korean leader “looks forward” to meeting the American president. The White House has said Trump plans to meet Kim by May amid nuclear tensions between the two nations. Trump has agreed to historic talks after South Korean officials relayed that Kim was committed to ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons and was willing to halt nuclear and missile tests. In the meanwhile, Trump says, “unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!” The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on companies across the globe to punish illicit trade with North Korea. Received message last night from XI JINPING of China that his meeting with KIM JONG UN went very well and that KIM looks forward to his meeting with me. In the meantime, and unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018 “For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that Kim’s visit to China “was an unprecedented, historic step in the right direction.” For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility. Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018 “It is also evidence that @POTUS’ maximum pressure campaign is working. We look forward to sitting down with Kim Jong Un to talk about a better future for his people,” Nauert said in a tweet. However, it remains unclear if there has been direct communication between Washington and Pyongyang on the planned Trump-Kim summit that is slated for May, and under what conditions North Korea would agree to give up the nuclear arsenal it has spent decades building. According to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Kim told China’s Xi that North Korea is willing to have dialogue with the United States and hold a summit of the two countries. Kim also said the issue of denuclearization can be resolved if South Korea and the U.S. take “progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace.” Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
At odds with John Bolton on North Korea, Jim Mattis appears isolated
Of the issues that divide Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and President Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser, John Bolton, one stands out: North Korea. Bolton, who will replace Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster on April 9, has publicly advocated for overthrowing the North Korean government. Mattis, a retired Marine general who knows intimately the costs of war, favors diplomacy to rid the North of its nuclear weapons and has said war on the Korean peninsula would be “catastrophic.” On Iran, too, Mattis would seem at odds with Bolton, who has argued for abandoning the Obama-era nuclear deal. These and other matters of war and peace will test Mattis’ influence with Trump as his national security team is overhauled. Mattis was sometimes at odds with McMaster, but the arrival of the hawkish Bolton, combined with the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the uncertain status of John Kelly as White House chief of staff, appears to leave Mattis more isolated than at any time since he took over the Pentagon 15 months ago. Often described as a steadying or moderating influence on the impulsive Trump, Mattis has little previous relationship with Bolton. The North Korea issue is front-and-center: Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean President Kim Jong Un by May to discuss the North’s nuclear disarmament. The unprecedented summit could be a turning point in a decades-old U.S.-North Korean standoff that Trump himself has said could end in “fire and fury” – an American nuclear attack __ to stop the North from gaining the ability to strike the U.S. with a nuclear missile. “This is buckle-up time,” retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said last week on MSNBC. “For the military I have three words: Sharpen your swords. He (Bolton) is someone who is going to reach for the military instrument.” The changes in the White House and at the State Department, while significant for Mattis, are hardly heart-stopping. People close to him sense no change in his commitment to the job; some suggest that Trump’s decision to move former Republican congressman and current CIA director Mike Pompeo to State, replacing Tillerson, could benefit Mattis in the sense that he’ll have a partner at State who is better aligned with Trump. Publicly, Mattis has said little about the shakeup. He was in Afghanistan when Tillerson got the ax. When reporters asked his reaction a couple of days later, Mattis said he preferred not to comment on the details, although he went on to suggest that its importance was being exaggerated. He said that in all of his discussions abroad with foreign government officials and American troops, the matter was not brought up once. “I understand why you’re asking, but I’m just pointing out that in most parts of the world this is a Washington, D.C. story,” he said. Another Washington story is Mattis and his ability to forge a workable relationship with Trump despite differences on some issues like the Iran nuclear deal, which Mattis says is flawed but worth honoring as long as the Iranians do. Mattis also has differed with the president over Trump’s wish to bar all transgender people from serving in the military, and he helped sway Trump from his inclination last year to end U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. The Mattis formula seems to be simple. Out of the spotlight, out of trouble. The less he says publicly, the less he risks losing influence with Trump. “Part of his success … is absolutely the fact that you don’t see him in the limelight terribly much,” says Loren Dejonge Schulman, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security who served in key national security positions in the White House and Pentagon under President Barack Obama. “That may be keeping him out of trouble with the White House but I think it’s setting an incredibly bad precedent in terms of Pentagon transparency.” If Mattis, who spent more than 40 years in uniform and is the first career military officer to lead the Pentagon since George C. Marshall in the early 1950s, isn’t the most experienced politician to run the military’s vast bureaucracy, he has shown a knack for staying out of trouble with his thin-skinned boss. Mattis has even broken Trump of his habit of calling the retired general “Mad Dog,” which Mattis insists was a media invention to begin with. Trump frequently has lunch and dinners with the defense secretary and speaks glowingly of him to outside advisers. White House officials have said that Trump sometimes repeats military historical anecdotes he heard from Mattis. Even Mattis’ few known stumbles have not dogged him. In August, for example, Mattis told sailors at a submarine base in his home state of Washington that the Navy would give them the worst and the best days of their lives, and then added, “That means you’re not some (expletive) sitting on the sidelines,” he said. “You know what I mean, kind of sitting there saying, ‘Well, I should have done something with my life.’” His language was quickly forgotten. The episode pointed to a man who has shaped the job and not let it shape him. So much so that perhaps the most poignant criticism of his tenure has been the secrecy with which the military has handled everything from troop deployment numbers to the details of its military strategies — things that often were made public under previous secretaries. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump plans to meet Kim Jong Un for nuke talks
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump plan to meet in May for nuclear disarmament talks, a whiplash development that would put two leaders who’ve repeatedly insulted, threatened and dismissed each other in the same room, possibly in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. It would have been an unthinkable suggestion just a few months ago, when the insults were at their peak — Trump was a “senile dotard” and Kim was “Little Rocket Man” — and the North was snapping off regular weapons tests in a dogged march toward its goal of a viable nuclear arsenal that can threaten the U.S. mainland. Liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who some believe has maneuvered the two leaders to this position, reflected the hope and relief many here feel about the planned summit when he declared Friday that it will be a “historical milestone” that will put the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula “really on track.” But there’s also considerable skepticism. North Korea, after all, has made a habit of reaching out, after raising fears during previous crises, with offers of dialogue meant to win aid and concessions. Some speculate that the North is trying to peel Washington away from its ally Seoul, weaken crippling sanctions and buy time for nuclear development. It has also, from the U.S. point of view, repeatedly cheated on past nuclear deals. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Kim Jong Un was surprisingly forward-leaning in talks with a South Korean delegation, and that led to President Trump’s decision to meet with the North Korean leader. (March 9) And now the North has landed a face-to-face meeting with the leader of the world’s most powerful country, a nation that North Korea has long sought to draw into talks that it hopes would establish a peace treaty to end the technically still-active Korean War and drive out all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, removing what the North says is a hostile encirclement of its territory by Washington and Seoul. Trump’s hastily reached decision to accept the meeting sent White House staff scrambling. Earlier Thursday, South Korean national security director Chung Eui-yong had briefed Trump and other top U.S. officials about a rare meeting with Kim in the North Korean capital. Trump then made a surprise visit to the White House press briefing room to alert reporters of an upcoming “major statement” on North Korea by South Korea. At a quickly called appearance on a White House driveway, Chung told reporters that Kim had “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible” and that “President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.” “Great progress being made,” Trump tweeted after the announcement. That remains to be seen. North Korea still produces propaganda declaring its continuing dedication to the “treasured sword” of its nuclear program. Washington still remains publicly dedicated to annual war games with the South that the North claims are invasion rehearsal —they’re expected to resume next month, after being postponed during the Winter Olympics in the South — and to keeping 28,500 troops in the South and 50,000 in Japan, largely as a way to deter North Korean aggression. North Korea is engaged in “a ploy to serve its own interests” and make Kim look like “a bold leader of a normal, peace-loving nuclear power,” according to Duyeon Kim, a visiting research fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum think tank in Seoul. “But in spite of the deceptive cloak, the agreement posed an opportunity for the United States. It put the ball in Washington’s court, and provides a window for the Trump administration to engage and test the regime through direct negotiations,” Kim wrote on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists web page. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Djibouti on Friday that the decision to meet with Kim was made by Trump himself and resulted from a sharp change in the North Korean leader’s stance. “What changed was his posture in a fairly dramatic way. It was a surprise to us that he was so forward-leaning,” Tillerson said. He said it would take “some weeks” before the timing of the talks is worked out. North Korea appeared to confirm the summit plans. A senior North Korean diplomat at the United Nations in New York, Pak Song Il, told The Washington Post in an email that the invitation was the result of Kim’s “broad minded and resolute decision” to contribute to the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula. Talks between Washington and Pyongyang have previously been overseen by lower-level experts, and have often bogged down, even when so-called “breakthroughs” have come, in the pesky details, such as allowing outsiders in to inspect North Korea’s nuclear compliance, for instance. Now, the talks will start at the top. And there will be no time to settle all the problems that have scuttled previous negotiations. It’s anyone’s guess what Trump and Kim might decide in the highest-level meeting in what has been essentially a bloody, seven-decade standoff between their countries. The announcement Friday followed weeks of softening ties between the Koreas, orchestrated by the South Korean leader, Moon, and culminating in a visit by Kim Jong Un’s sister to the South to observe the Olympics in Pyeongchang and then Chung’s trip to meet with Kim in Pyongyang. “This is a tried-and-true North Korean tactic, reaching out at the height of crisis in hopes of breaking out of spiraling tensions with the United States,” according to a report by Zhixing Zhang and Evan Rees, Asia specialists at Stratfor, a geopolitical analytical group. “In this instance, Pyongyang has skillfully played on South Korea’s fear of a military strike and hopes of reunification.” Trump took office vowing to stop North Korea from its pursuit of a working long-range nuclear-tipped missile. He’s oscillated between threats and insults directed at Kim that have fueled fears of war, and more conciliatory rhetoric. The historic announcement
