Trump, Abe to meet pre-summit
TOKYO: With efforts being made to reinstate the planned summit meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan is not taking any chances.
After speaking with Mr Trump by telephone on Monday, Mr Abe told reporters in Tokyo that he and the US president had “agreed to meet before the US-North Korea summit”.
Mr Abe has been concerned that Mr Trump might make a nuclear disarmament deal with North Korea that protects the United States but does not address Tokyo’s worries about the North’s shortrange missiles that could hit Japan.
By offering to meet with the US president before he heads to Singapore, Mr Abe hopes to be one of the last advisers to have his ear before he meets with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
Mr Abe told reporters that Mr Trump had briefed him on plans for the summit meeting, although the Japanese leader did not provide details.
The White House said in a statement that Mr Trump and Mr Abe had agreed on Monday to cooperate on the “shared imperative” of seeking the “complete and permanent dismantlement” of North Korea’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile programmes.
The statement said the two leaders had agreed to meet again in advance of “the expected meeting between the United States and North Korea”.
According to NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, Mr Abe — who met with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over the weekend — conveyed both Japan’s and Russia’s support for the summit meeting to go forward.
Less than 24 hours after cancelling the event with a letter to North Korea’s leader on Thursday, Mr Trump hinted that it might still proceed as planned. By Sunday, diplomatic and technical experts from the United States and North Korea had met in the North Korean part of the Demilitarised Zone that separates the two Koreas in an effort to salvage the summit meeting, which was planned for June 12 in Singapore. It is unclear what has happened so far in the talks at the border.
Delegations from the United States and North Korea arrived in Singapore on Monday evening, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap. Negotiations over logistics and other issues related to the possible summit meeting were expected to begin yesterday.
The North Korean delegation is led by Kim Chang-son, a top logistics and protocol official, Yonhap said.