Trump cancels talks, could raise Korea tensions
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision Thursday to abandon a summit next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un left the White House scrambling to explain the outcome to allies amid fears that the collapse of talks would mean a return to heightened tensions between nuclear powers in East Asia.
Trump announced he was pulling out of the planned meeting in Singapore on June 12 in a letter to Kim that came less than 12 hours after a North Korean official had personally disparaged Vice President Mike Pence and warned of a nuclear showdown if the United States did not alter its tone ahead of the summit.
In a missive that aides said the president dictated, Trump was by turns regretful of the missed opportunity and adamant that he would not tolerate the “tremendous anger and open hostility” from North Korea. The president pointedly warned
Kim that he oversees a nuclear weapons arsenal that is “so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”
Trump’s aim was to remind the young dictator “of the real balance of power,” a senior White House official told reporters. “The president’s overarching goal isn’t a meeting. It’s always been the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He will never compromise the safety and security of the United States and its allies.”
In remarks at the White House, Trump left the door open for the summit to be rescheduled and a North Korean official, perhaps eager to foist blame on Trump, responded that Pyongyang remains ready to meet “at any time.”
A summit is urgently needed to deal with the “grave hostilities” in the relationship, Vice Minister Kim Gye Gwan said, according to North Korea’s state media. “Leader Kim Jong Un had focused every effort on his meeting with President Trump.”
But senior White House aides emphasized that a rescheduled meeting was unlikely anytime soon, citing a series of “broken promises” from Pyongyang that have frayed trust.
Among other things, they said, North Korea failed to show up for a key logistical planning meeting with a U.S. delegation in Singapore last month. Pyongyang offered no communications with Washington for a week before the bellicose statement late Wednesday, White House aides said.
“I believe that this is a tremendous setback for North Korea and, indeed, a setback for the world,” Trump said.
The breakdown represented a stunning turn of events for Trump’s boldest and riskiest foreign policy endeavor, coming just 10 weeks after the president impulsively agreed in March to meet Kim after a year of escalating hostilities that had raised the specter of a military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula.
Amid visions of a historic peace deal that had eluded his predecessors and inspired talk of a Nobel Peace Prize among his core supporters, Trump rushed headlong into the summit process — disregarding warnings from his own aides that North Korea has long been an untrustworthy negotiating partner and that Kim’s intentions remained unclear.
On Thursday, the president’s cancellation of talks sent renewed shock waves through East Asia, where the other major powers — South Korea, Japan and China — had jockeyed for leverage over the prospects that warming relations could reshape alliances.
Trump and his aides have blamed Beijing for influencing Kim in recent weeks to take a harder line, souring relations ahead of the summit. But the president’s decision was likely felt most acutely in Seoul, where President Moon Jae-in, fearful of the escalating threats between Washington and Pyongyang last year, had staked his presidency on a policy of engagement with the North and positioned himself as the intermediary between Trump and Kim.
Moon, who met with Kim last month in the Korean demilitarized zone, had visited Trump at the White House on Tuesday in a desperate bid to save the Singapore summit. Instead, having arrived in Seoul just hours earlier, he appeared blindsided by the news.
Trump’s decision came on the same day that North Korea announced that it had followed through on a pledge to destroy its underground nuclear testing facilities, although White House officials said the action could not be verified because Pyongyang did not admit international nuclear security experts to the site.
Moon said he was “very perplexed and sorry” that the summit had been canceled, adding that “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and ensuring a permanent peace are historic tasks that cannot be delayed or forsaken.”