Trump talks to leaders of China, Japan on N Korea
UNPRECEDENTED DATE Hillary Clinton questions if the administration is ready
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that China’s President Xi Jinping is being “helpful” as the US moves toward a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump gave few details in a tweet about his telephone conversation with Xi on Friday, but the White House had said the two leaders committed to keeping the pressure on North Korea until it takes “tangible steps” toward denuclearisation.
Trump also said he spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about North Korea and trade. “Spoke to Prime Minister Abe of Japan, who is very enthusiastic about talks with North Korea. Also discussing opening up Japan to much better trade with the US...It will all work out!,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump stunned the world this week by accepting an invitation to meet Kim before the end of May, an unexpected turnabout after months of intensifying brinksmanship that sent tensions soaring.
Trump tweeted that Xi “appreciates that the U.S. is working to solve the problem diplomatically rather than going with the ominous alternative.”
The White House said the evermore-powerful Chinese president committed to “maintain pressure and sanctions until North Korea takes tangible steps toward complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation.”
Trump praised a possible future agreement with the communist North as “very good” for the international community as a whole in another Friday tweet.
“The deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the World. Time and place to be determined,” Trump wrote.
As aides scrambled to catch up with the president’s decision, taken before consulting key confidantes, the White House sent mixed messages about conditions. “They’ve made promises to denuclearise, they’ve made promises to stop nuclear and missile testing,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. “We’re not going to have this meeting take place until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea,” she told reporters.
Officials behind the scenes said this did not constitute a change of heart.
In the Hague, former secretary of state and Trump rival Hillary Clinton questioned the administration’s readiness for the diplomatic challenge ahead.
“If you want to talk to Kim Jong Un about his nuclear weapons you need experienced diplomats,” Clinton told Dutch tabloid
Algemeen Dagblad in an interview published on Saturday.
She said the State Department was “being eroded,” and experienced diplomats on the North Korean issue were in short supply because many have left.
“You cannot have diplomacy without diplomats,” she said, adding “the danger is not being recognized by the Trump government.”
Clinton’s words echo those of veteran diplomat and former US ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson, who warned that negotiating with North Korea was not “reality television.”
“It’s a real opportunity... I worry about the president’s unpreparedness and lack of discipline,” Richardson told AFP.
The deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the World. Time and place to be determined DONALD TRUMP, US president, on Twitter