Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
High-level preparations carry on amid doubts
S. Korea official: U.S., N. Korea far apart on key issue
SINGAPORE — At an island resort secluded from throngs of international reporters, a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with his American counterpart Wednesday to plan one of the most widely anticipated diplomatic events in a decade.
The meeting in Singapore — one of three bilateral meetings this week aimed at salvaging a summit between Kim and President Donald Trump — dealt purely with logistics but has been shrouded in secrecy.
Hotel security guards blocked journalists from the premises of the resort off Singapore’s southeastern coast, and the White House and the State Department declined to confirm even mundane details, such as meeting dates or participants.
The logistics meeting came amid fresh doubts that Kim and Trump will actually sit down to negotiate the U.S. demand for the complete dismantlement of Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Last week, Trump canceled the summit, which had been scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, but days later approved a flurry of new talks in New York, Singapore and the Korean Demilitarized Zone to explore putting it back on. But on Wednesday, a top South Korean official warned that “significant” differences remain between the two sides on how to achieve denuclearization.
In New York, North Korea’s Kim Yong Chol, one of the North Korean leader’s closest aides, was to have dinner Wednesday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled from Washington to see him. The two planned a “day full of meetings” on Thursday, the White House said.
Their talks aim to determine whether the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un can be restored, U.S. officials have said.
In Singapore, teams are tasked with working out the logistics of the summit, including venue spaces, transportation, security and group photographs. They face a daunting target date of June 12, and the knowledge that a failed meeting could increase the chances for military confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang.
“We must remember that modern-day summits between two nations are completely scripted affairs — no detail, agenda item or deliverable is left to chance,” said Harry Kazianis, an Asia expert at the Center for the National Interest.
“These take months to negotiate, and considering the stakes for North Korea and the United States, the outcome must be determined before the meeting.”
Kim has expressed an unusual degree of interest in the summit’s logistics, asking Pompeo during his visit to Pyongyang this month about fuel for the 6,000-mile round-trip flight to Singapore and how many bodyguards he could bring, according to people familiar with the conversations who were not authorized to discuss sensitive conversations.
Although most logistics teams would be led by a low-level bureaucrat, Kim sent his de facto chief of staff, Kim Chang Son, one of the country’s most powerful officials, to head the North Korean team. The U.S. team is led by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, who has served in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan’s.
On Wednesday, the two teams met at the luxurious Capella hotel on the island of Sentosa. Some members of the U.S. and North Koreans teams dressed casually in khakis and short-sleeve button-down shirts in Singapore’s 85 degree heat. The hotel has barred journalists from entering, and a Washington Post reporter was ordered to leave the property after speaking briefly to the American delegation.
Singapore is considered neutral because it has a long-standing trade and investment ties with the United States and has sustained a diplomatic relationship with North Korea since 1975 even as other countries have severed ties.
Meanwhile, a separate team of U.S. and North Korean negotiators in the Korean Demilitarized Zone appears to have hit obstacles following a four-hour meeting Wednesday.
That group is focused on the substance of the negotiations should a TrumpKim summit happen, but South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said the different positions of Washington and Pyongyang “remain quite significant.”
“It will not be easy to narrow the gap and find common ground, but I think it would not be impossible,” he said during an address in Seoul.