Trump hints at longer path for North to denuke

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.

US 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 meagre 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 denuclearising the Koren a 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.