Trump dangles prospect of Kim visiting White House
President Donald Trump has held out the prospect of inviting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the White House if he deemed next week’s summit a success while also signalling he was willing to walk away if he thought talks did not go well.
At a White House news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump also repeated what he said last week that it was possible he and Kim could sign an agreement to end the 1950-53 Korean War, which was concluded only with a truce, not a peace treaty.
“We could sign an agreement, as you know that would be a first step ... We’re looking at it, we’re talking about it with a lot of other people,” Trump told reporters. “That’s probably the easy part. The hard part remains after that.”
Trump added that he hoped someday US relations with Kim’s secretive Pyongyang government could be normalised.
The main issue for the June 12 summit in Singapore is the US demand for North Korea to abandon a nuclear weapons programme that now threatens the United States.
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North Korea has rejected giving up its arsenal unilaterally and defends its nuclear and missile programmes as a deterrent against what it sees as US aggression.
The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Thursday re-emphasised Washington’s stance going into the talks. He said Trump will reject anything short of “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
“President Trump is hopeful. But he’s also going into the summit with his eyes wide open,” Pompeo said at a White House briefing after the Trump-Abe news conference.
Pompeo, however, added that the US would work to guarantee North Korea’s security should it denuclearise. Trump “is prepared to ensure a DPRK free of its weapons of mass destruction is also a secure North Korea,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo plans to stay in the region following the summit to meet with officials from Japan and South Korea and to travel to China, an important North Korean ally, to discuss the next steps involving Pyongyang.