TRUMP: GREAT FUTURE FOR N. KOREA IF IT GIVES UP NUKES
North Korea can be new Asian economic tiger, says US president
UNITED States President Donald Trump touted North Korea’s “awesome” future if his “friend” Kim Jong-un, whom he meets for a high-stakes dinner yesterday, agrees to give up his nuclear arsenal.
Trump’s upbeat message came in a tweet hours before a second summit here to build on the pair’s first meeting in Singapore in June.
Trump risked being distracted by scandal back in Washington, where his former lawyer Michael Cohen was set to describe him as a “con man” in testimony to Congress scheduled for shortly after Trump’s dinner ends.
Trump, seeking a big foreign policy win to push back against domestic troubles, believes his unique brand of personal diplomacy and business acumen can make history.
His goal is to persuade Kim to dismantle his nuclear weapons and resolve a stand-off with the totalitarian state that has bedevilled US leaders since the end of the Korean war in 1953.
To lure Kim into radical change, Trump is believed to be considering offering a formal peace declaration — though not a treaty — to draw a line under the technically still unfinished war.
But Washington faces mounting pressure to extract significant concessions from Kim, who has shown little desire to ditch the nuclear capability.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said yesterday the Hanoi meeting could be “an important step towards advancing the denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula.
While the Singapore summit ended with a statement promising to work “towards” denuclearisation, Washington and Pyongyang disagree on what that even means.
And while North Korea has now gone more than a year without conducting missile and nuclear tests, it has done nothing to roll back the weapons already built.
Trump, a former real estate tycoon who often boasts of being one of the world’s best negotiators, is pitching a vision of North Korea as a new Asian economic tiger if it surrenders its nuclear status.
He said the country could one day emulate Vietnam, a communist state once locked in devastating conflict with the US, but now a thriving trade partner.
The Hanoi summit is more elaborate than the Singapore occasion. The White House said Trump and Kim will hold a 10minute meeting before a 20minute session without aides, followed by dinner lasting around 90 minutes.
Today, they are due to meet again, although no details have been released, adding to the impression that much is being decided at the last minute.
Washington would ideally like Kim to dismantle a key nuclear facility at Yongbyon, allow in international inspectors, or even hand over a list of all his nuclear assets — something the North Koreans have categorically refused to do.
In return, Trump is believed to be considering dangling relief from tough international sanctions. Opening diplomatic liaison offices is another possible US concession.
Another possibility is a joint declaration to end the Korean War, which closed with a ceasefire but no peace treaty.