Summit is set for Trump, Kim
Landmark meeting announced for June 12, to be held in Singapore
WASHINGTON— Envisioning “a very special moment for world peace,” U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for highly anticipated summit talks in Singapore on June 12. He set the stage for his announcement by hosting a 3 a.m., made-for-TV welcome for three Americans held by Kim’s government.
Final details in place, Trump and Kim agreed to the first faceto-face North Korea-U.S. summit since the end of the1950-53 Korean War. It’s the most consequential and perhaps riskiest foreign policy effort so far in Trump’s presidency as North Korea’s nuclear program approaches a treacherous milestone — the capacity to strike the continental U.S. with a thermonuclear warhead.
Trump says the U.S. is aiming for “denuclearization” of the entire Korean Peninsula, but he has yet to fill in just what steps that might include and what the timing would be.
“We’re starting off on a new footing,” Trump said of himself and Kim as he welcomed the detainees in a floodlit ceremony at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. He hailed their release as a potential breakthrough in relations between the longtime adversary nations.
He and Kim “will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” he said later on Twitter.
Kim has suspended nuclear and missile tests and put his nuclear program up for negotiation, but questions remain about how serious his offer is and what disarmament steps he would be willing to take. The White House has said withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from South Korea is “not on the table.”
Trump had wanted to hold the summit in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas but yielded to the concerns of officials who thought a DMZ meeting would focus attention on relations between the North and South rather than the nuclear question.
Trump thanked North Korean leader Kim for releasing the Americans and said, “I really think he wants to do something” on denuclearization.
Pence said on NBC News, “In this moment the regime in North Korea has been dealing, as far as we can see, in good faith.”
Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who was among several Republican lawmakers who dined with Trump and National Security Adviser John Bolton Wednesday evening before the detainees returned, said their release was a positive development, but he remained cautious about North Korea’s intentions.
“We are in uncharted waters,” he said. “This is the highest level diplomacy that the United States has to offer. Failure would be a significant setback to diplomatic efforts.”
As for the venue, why Singapore?
Located at the southern tip of Malaysia, the prosperous city state is a regional Southeast Asia hub whose free-enterprise philosophy welcomes trading partners from everywhere. It has close diplomatic and military ties with the U.S. and yet is also familiar ground for North Korea, with which it established diplomatic relations in 1975.
“Since their independence, they’ve very deliberately developed a reputation as an honest broker between East and West,” said David Adelman, the former U.S. ambassador.