Hard choices for US, North Korea at high-stakes summit
After a burst of hectic diplomacy, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un’s nuclear summit is on course to go ahead — but if it is to live up to the hype, both sides will need to make difficult concessions.
In what would be the first breakthrough in the fraught process, North Korea and the United States may sign a peace deal that could pave the way for a cautious thaw in ties.
“Can you believe that we’re talking about the ending of the Korean War?” Trump asked rhetorically, marvelling at his own diplomatic audacity.
The two countries have been technically at war for decades, even if their conflict was frozen by an armistice 65 years ago.
But what Washington is really seeking is the North’s nuclear disarmament. Pyongyang, however, has long insisted on becoming a respected nuclear state and — while it may have suspended nuclear and missile tests — surrendering its bombs is off the table.
So how can the circle be squared? How can the two parties arrive at what Washington says must be the “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula?
“We’ll know right away if it’s a failure,” Centre for Strategic and International Studies analyst Boris Toucas told AFP. “For example, if Kim won’t give written guarantees on denuclearisation or if there’s just a declaration of good intent without a road map.”
The summit would be a challenge for the most seasoned diplomats and just last year neophyte statesman Trump was mocking Kim as “Little Rocket Man,” while the young autocrat sneered at the “mentally deranged dotard.” The stakes have been raised still further by the accelerated time frame. Trump may have conceded there will be no grand deal at the first meeting, but he wants a win before his first term ends in 2021. North Korean leaders have been seeking face-to-face talks with a sitting US president for a quarter of a century, but Trump only agreed to meet Kim in March and now seems to be in a hurry.
So much of a hurry, in fact, that many in Washington worry he will naively make concessions without securing the North Korean arsenal. But the cynics were also cheered that Trump now publicly accepts that the meeting is probably only the start of the process, and some former officials think some progress can be made.