Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump, Kim arrive for talks
North Korea, U.S. prepare in Singapore
SINGAPORE — President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un converged on this island city-state Sunday ahead of one of the most unusual and highly anticipated summits in recent world history, a sit-down meant to settle a standoff over Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.
Trump descended from Air Force One into the steamy Singapore night, greeting officials and declaring he felt “very good,” before he was whisked away to his hotel, driving along a route lined with police and photo-snapping onlookers. Trump traveled to Singapore from Canada, where he met with other world leaders whose countries make up the Group of Seven.
Hours earlier, a jet carrying Kim landed. After shaking hands with the Singapore foreign minister, Kim sped through the streets in a limousine, two large North Korean flags
fluttering on the hood, surrounded by other black vehicles with tinted windows and bound for the luxurious and closely guarded St. Regis Hotel.
He and Trump are set to meet Tuesday morning in the first summit of its kind between a leader of North Korea and a sitting U.S. president. The North has faced crippling diplomatic and economic sanctions as it has advanced development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet face to face Tuesday at 9 a.m. (which is 8 p.m. today Central time).
A U.S. official said today that Trump and Kim will first meet one on one with translators in a session that could last up to two hours, before they open the meeting to their respective advisers. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations and insisted on anonymity.
Kim smiled broadly Sunday evening as he met with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Lee welcomed Kim and his entourage to his palatial office, for talks laying the groundwork for Tuesday’s summit.
“The entire world is watching the historic summit between [North Korea] and the United States of America, and thanks to your sincere efforts … we were able to complete the preparations for the historic summit,” Kim told Lee through an interpreter.
Trump is set to meet with Lee today.
“From our point of view, it’s important that the meeting take place and that the meeting sets developments on a new trajectory — one that will be conducive to the security and stability of the region,” Lee told reporters in Singapore earlier in the afternoon.
Trump has said he hopes to make a legacy-defining deal for the North to give up its nuclear weapons, though he has recently sought to manage expectations, saying it may take more than one meeting.
The North, many experts believe, stands on the brink of being able to target the entire U.S. mainland with its nuclear-armed missiles, and while there’s deep skepticism that Kim will quickly give up those hard-won nukes, there’s also some hope that diplomacy can replace the animosity between the U.S. and the North.
U.S. and North Korean officials are set to meet this morning in Singapore to make final preparations for Tuesday’s meeting. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sung Kim, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines who has taken the lead on policy negotiations with the North, will hold a “working group” with a North Korean delegation.
The North Korean autocrat’s every move will be followed by 3,000 journalists who have converged on Singapore. It’s a reflection of the intense global curiosity over Kim’s sudden turn to diplomacy in recent months after a slew of North Korean nuclear and missile tests last year raised serious fears of war.
Kim’s 3,000-mile journey from North Korea was full of intrigue, with three planes departing from Pyongyang on Sunday morning.
One was an Air China Boeing 747, usually used by the Chinese government to carry high-level officials, that took off about an hour after it arrived from Beijing.
Then Kim’s private jet, a Soviet-made Ilyushin-62, departed.
Kim had taken that plane when he traveled to the Chinese city of Dalian in May to meet President Xi Jinping. But Kim was in fact on the Air China plane. Kim’s sister and close aide, Kim Yo Jong, arrived in Singapore on the North Korean jet.
The North Korean leader was accompanied by officials including Kim Yong Chol, a top aide who delivered a letter to Trump in the White House earlier this month; Ri Su Yong, who is in charge of international relations in the ruling communist Workers’ Party and was ambassador to Switzerland while Kim Jong Un was at school there; and foreign minister Ri Yong Ho.
Security was tight outside Kim’s hotel, with all cars being inspected and curtains and large potted plants shielding the entrance.
Only guests were being allowed into the hotel, and both Singaporean police and North Korean guards were keeping watch.
Two reporters from KBS, the South Korean public broadcasting channel, were expelled from Singapore after being detained on suspicion of entering the North Korean ambassador’s residence in Singapore on Saturday.
KOREAN WAR ARMISTICE
It’s Kim’s pursuit of nuclear weapons that gives his meeting with Trump such high stakes. The meeting was initially meant to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons, but the talks have been portrayed by Trump in recent days more as a get-to-know-you session. Trump has also raised the possibility of further summits and an agreement ending the Korean War by replacing the armistice signed in 1953 with a peace treaty. China and South Korea would also have to sign off on any legal treaty.
The fighting ended on July 27, 1953, but the war technically continues today because instead of a difficult-to-negotiate peace treaty, military officers for the U.S.-led United Nations, North Korea and China signed an armistice that halted the fighting.
It’s unclear what Trump and Kim might decide Tuesday.
Pyongyang has said it is willing to deal away its entire nuclear arsenal if the United States provides it with reliable security assurances and other benefits. But many say this is highly unlikely.
Any nuclear deal will hinge on North Korea’s willingness to allow unfettered outside inspections of the country’s warheads and nuclear fuel, much of which is likely kept in a vast complex of underground facilities. Past nuclear deals have crumbled over North Korea’s reluctance to open its doors to outsiders.
Another possibility from the summit is a deal to end the Korean War, which North Korea has long demanded, presumably, in part, to get U.S. troops off the Korean Peninsula.
In North Korea, most people were still in the dark about the summit, with the Korean Central News Agency only reporting today that Kim was in Singapore, had met with Lee and would meet Trump on Tuesday. Previously, the official media had reported that the two leaders plan to meet, but offered few specifics, including where and when.
The report noted the summit is being held “under the great attention and expectation of the whole world.”
It also offered a list of Pyongyang’s talking points, saying Kim and Trump will exchange “wide-ranging and profound views” on establishing a new relationship, the issue of building a “permanent and durable peace mechanism” and realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
DISMANTLING OF NUKES
In the United States, two top senators indicated Sunday that they generally agree on what a good nuclear deal with North Korea might look like, but they differed sharply on whether to back it up with a military Plan B.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a leading Republican hawk, said in an interview on ABC’s This Week that he’s “100 percent” pleased with a letter top Senate Democrats sent Trump last week insisting that any deal with North Korea must include a permanent dismantling of the country’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.
But Graham also called on his colleagues to go a step further and authorize use of military force if diplomatic routes fail.
“Here’s what I would say to my Democratic colleagues,” Graham told host George Stephanopolous. “I appreciate you telling the president what a good nuclear deal would look like, but the country needs you to back the president up to get that deal.”
Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a signatory of the Democrats’ letter, said he’s not ready to back a congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force until he is confident “the path to peace really isn’t obtainable” without military action.
“I love my friend Lindsey Graham, but I think first we have to give a chance at peace, and that’s why we outlined very clearly what a successful agreement would be,” Menendez said. “A complete, irreversible denuclearization” for the Korean Peninsula.
Asked by Stephanopolous whether Trump deserves credit for brokering the first meeting in recent history between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, Menendez said he is worried Trump “thinks this is a mano-a-mano engagement in which he can achieve the success we want.”
“We want him to succeed, but I think success has to be defined not as a grand moment in which you say we have peace in our time when we don’t have the verifiable elements of a denuclearization,” Menendez said.