Trump to meet Kim
U.S.-N. Korea summit has potential for nuclear breakthrough
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has accepted an extraordinary invitation by North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un to meet this spring, White House and South Korean officials said Thursday, signaling a potential diplomatic breakthrough in long-stalled efforts to end the nuclear impasse on the Korean Peninsula.
Any face-to-face meeting, if it takes place, would be historic — the first ever between the leaders of two longtime adversaries that fought one bitter war and have repeatedly threatened to fight another. Leaders of the two nations have never even shared a phone call.
It would also be fraught with risk, given the unpredictable nature of North Korea’s government and the
NORTH KOREA
nuclear stakes.
Chung Eui-yong, South Korea’s national security director, said in an statement to reporters at the White House that the North Korean ruler had expressed “his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible” and that Trump had agreed to do so.
It was unclear where the meeting would take place, and officials later said the meeting would be by the end of May.
Kim has not left North Korea since taking power in 2011, and only a few foreign leaders have visited the country, which has struggled under multiple United Nations and other sanctions for its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Chung made the announcement after briefing Trump’s top national security aides, including national security adviser H.R. Mcmaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan.
Chung said he was delivering a message to the White House that the North Korean ruler had given him and Suh Hoon, chief of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, this week in Pyongyang, the North’s capital.
The South Korean official said
Kim had agreed to “refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests” and that the North Koreans understood that the U.s.-south Korean joint military exercises that are scheduled for this spring “must continue.”
Chung praised Trump’s “leadership,” saying the president’s “maximum-pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture.”
South Korea, the U.S. and their allies “remain fully and resolutely committed to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” he said, adding that they would “not repeat the mistakes of the past.”
In a tweet, Trump later expressed cautious optimism.
“Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze. Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!” he wrote.
White House aides scrambled to lower expectations — even as they said Trump deserved credit for the meeting.
“President Trump has been very clear from the beginning that he is not prepared to reward North Korea in exchange for talks. But he is willing to accept an invitation at this time to meet and to allow — and really expects — North Korea to put action to these words that were conveyed via the South Koreans,” a senior administration official said.
At this point, “we aren’t really talking about negotiations,” the official said.
The U.S. and its allies have tried since the early 1990s to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, but every set of negotiations ultimately failed.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that Trump “will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined. We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain.”
Victor Cha, an academic and former National Security Council official who was briefly considered to be Trump’s ambassador to South Korea, said details were still too unclear to know whether a rapprochement was possible.
“The question becomes what (are) we putting on (the) table,” he said via Twitter. “Sanctions? Normalization? Peace treaty?”