Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump casts doubt on N. Korea summit
He offers mixed signals as S. Korea leader urges talks
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump threw plans for next month’s historic summit with North Korea into greater uncertainty Tuesday even as he met at the White House with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to try to keep the diplomatic breakthrough on track.
“It may not work out for June 12,” Trump told reporters, then further confused the question by adding, “There’s a good chance that we’ll have the meeting.”
Trump refused to fully commit to the session in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, vowing to attend only if U.S. conditions are met. North Korean denuclearization, the president said, “must take place,” but he stopped short of demanding that Kim end his nuclear weapons program all at once.
“All-in-one would be nice,” Trump said. “Does it have to be? I’m not sure I want to totally commit myself.”
Moon, who is deeply invested in peace talks and eager to see the TrumpKim summit occur, sat mostly quiet beside Trump as the U.S. president answered reporters’ questions, often without allowing the interpreter seated just behind his armchair to translate for Moon.
During Moon’s own brief remarks amid the prolonged back-and-forth between Trump and reporters, he lavished praise on Trump, as he had in previous meetings, for helping steer North Korea and South Korea closer to a possible peace agreement.
“Thanks to your vision of achieving peace through strength, and your strong leadership,” Moon said through a translator, “...we find ourselves standing one step closer to the dream of achieving the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and world peace.”
Trump was less outwardly optimistic. “We’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “Whether or not it happens, you’ll be knowing pretty soon.”
Hours after Trump met with Moon, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an unexpected appearance before reporters at the State Department, apparently to deliver a more reassuring message about the summit. He said he remains optimistic it will take place as scheduled.
“We are doing all we can to make it historic and successful,” he said, adding, “we are still working toward June 12.”
“I’m optimistic,” added Pompeo, who twice met with Kim in Pyongyang to set the stage.
He acknowledged that “this could be something that comes right to the end and doesn’t happen.” Yet, having set a date and location, “we are driving on.”
Earlier at the White House, Moon sought to counter what he acknowledged were the “many skeptical views within the United States” about whether the summit can succeed or whether North Korea will keep any commitments.
”I don’t think there will be positive developments in history if we just assume that because it all failed in the past, it will fail again,” Moon said.
Hours earlier, South Korea’s top national security adviser had professed “99.9 percent” confidence that the summit would take place as planned. It is not clear whether the scheduled summit is truly in doubt or Trump, who had expressed such excitement about the historic meeting that aides warned him about appearing over-eager, is merely trying to improve his leverage heading into it.
Momentum for the summit slowed last week after North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator said the country would never give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions, and officials canceled a meeting with South Korea. Subsequently, the North also expressed doubt about the meeting with Trump.
North Korea’s statement came in response to an interview in which John Bolton, Trump’s new national security adviser, cited Libya as a model for disarmament — a parallel that unnerved and angered Kim. Libya agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but the promise of economic integration with the West failed to materialize and the leader who agreed to the deal, Moammar Gadhafi, was overthrown and killed by Western-backed rebels in 2011.
Trump attempted to distance himself from Bolton’s remarks, which appeared to undercut the diplomatic table-setting done by Pompeo in his two meetings with Kim, one of which secured the release of three U.S. citizens held prisoner by Kim’s regime.
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump suggested that China might be to blame for North Korea’s apparent hardening of its attitude about brokering a deal. Recently, Kim twice visited China and met with the country’s leaders.
“I think there was a little change in attitude from Kim Jong Un. I don’t like that,” Trump said. “There was a difference when (Kim) left China a second time.”
Moon, who met with Kim at the demilitarized zone separating North Korea and South Korea last month, is committed to ending the decades-long stalemate between the divided nations. His visit to Washington is largely an effort to reassure Trump and keep plans for the summit on track.
“The stakes are high for President Moon because he really needs a Trump-Kim summit to happen, and progress on the nuclear issue between the U.S. and North Korea diplomatically, in order for him to drive and fully achieve his peace agenda — even if the summit gets postponed,” said Duveon Kim, a visiting senior fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum in Seoul.
Before reporters were finally ushered out of the Oval Office, Trump expressed bland optimism about eventually making progress. “In the end it will work out,” he said. “I can’t tell you exactly how or why, but it always does.”
The administration lately has softened its aggressive approach toward China, fueling speculation that Trump worries that Beijing, given its influence with Kim, could disrupt the potential for a far-reaching deal.
Trump acknowledged that his crackdown on foreign trading partners took a back seat to successful negotiations over North Korea, saying, “No matter how big trade is, North Korea in this case is the big one.”