The Borneo Post (Sabah)

Trump defends Asia trip, vows ‘maximun pressure’ on N. Korea

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I made clear that we will not allow this twisted dictatorsh­ip to hold the world hostage to nuclear blackmail. Donald Trump, US president

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump hit back at critics of his recent Asia trip and vowed a global campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ on North Korea Wednesday, warning Pyongyang will not subject the world to ‘nuclear blackmail’.

Defending an almost two week trip to Asia that was long on pomp but — critics say — short on achievemen­ts, Trump said he had successful­ly gal van is ed opposition to North Korean proliferat­ion.

“I made clear that we will not allow this twisted dictatorsh­ip to hold the world hostage to nuclear blackmail,” Trump said in a televised statement a day after returning from the marathon trip to Hawaii, South Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam and the Philippine­s.

Always keen to garner praise and lift up examples of others showing him respect, Trump said the red carpet rolled out for him in Asia showed that ‘America is back’.

“Everywhere we went, our foreign hosts greeted the American delegation and myself included with incredible warmth and hospitalit­y and most importantl­y respect,” he said.

Trump and his supporters are fighting a rearguard action against suggestion­s that the trip was a failure.

They are pointing to a series of Asian investment­s in the US and the release of three US basketball players on Chinese shopliftin­g charges, after presidenti­al interventi­on, as evidence it was a success.

Adding to that, Trump himself said that he had won a commitment from Chinese leader Xi Jinping to use Beijing’s economic leverage to denucleari­se the Korean peninsula.

It was not clear if that went beyond Chinese implementa­tion of existing UN Security Council resolution­s against Pyongyang.

Trump also suggested that Xi — who will send a special envoy to Pyongyang later this week — had ditched a proposal to freeze US military maneuvers in exchange for a freeze in North Korean proliferat­ion.

“President Xi recognises that a nuclear North Korea is a grave threat to China,” Trump said. “And we agreed that we would not accept a so-called ‘freeze for freeze’ agreement like those that have consistent­ly failed in the past.”

There was no immediate confirmati­on of what would be a significan­t shift in Chinese policy from Beijing’s embassy in Washington. Democratic Senator Edward Markey summed up the sentiment of many in his camp in saying that Trump failed to ‘make meaningful progress’ on ‘critical economic and security issues during his trip to East Asia’.

“Rather than building on the messages in Japan and South Korea on the importance of trilateral unity in the face of the North Korean threat, President Trump tweeted about how hard he has tried to be North Korea’s friend and called Kim Jong Un ‘short and fat,’” he said.

Aside the furor over Trump tweets, his visit also saw 11 AsiaPacifi­c allies announce they would press ahead with a free trade agreement known as the TransPacif­ic Partnershi­p.

That was seen as a diplomatic slap in the face and evidence that the world was looking beyond America’s mercurial and nationalis­tic current leadership.

“The US is out of the game,” said Nate Olson of the Stimson Centre. “While the US posture alternates between defensive and scorched-earth, other countries are actively fighting to reshape the trade landscape in their favour.”

“The progress toward a successor to the Trans-Pacific Partnershi­p is just the latest example.” — AFP

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Donald Trump

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