The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
More coverage from U.S.-North Korea summit,
BERLIN—While South Koreans cheered with hope and China sawan opening to discuss lifting sanctions on North Korea, some countries in Europe and the Mideast were more cautious.
Many have applauded the recent months of denuclearization diplomacy between North Korea and the U.S. after a year of mounting tension, threats and name-calling. Hopes for peace on the long-divided Korean Peninsula, however, remained tempered by the many failed attempts in the past.
“The United States and North Korea have been in a state of antagonism for more than half a century,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said. “Today, that the two countries’ highest leaders can sit together and have equal talks, has important and positive meaning, and is creating a new history.”
At a train station in Seoul, the South Korean capital, people cheered and applauded as televisions screens broadcast the handshake between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un live.
Leaders in Europe also responded positively to seeing Trump and Kim sit down together, but welcomed the development with wait-and-see skepticism.
“We knowthat crisis management and international policy are a marathon,” Andrea Nahles, the leader of Germany’s Social Democrats, said. “To be honest, I can’t judge how far what was agreed today will translate into reality.”
Trump’s unilateral decision last month to pull out of the landmark deal to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons has left the other
nations involved scrambling to preserve the pact.
With that as a backdrop, European Union foreign policy chief Fed erica Mogherini told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, that the U.S.-North Korea summit proved that diplomacy was the right path to follow.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he “could hardly sleep” in anticipation of the meeting and expressed hope for “complete denuclearization and peace.”
Iran noted that not only had Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, but irritated Group of Seven leaders by agreeing to sign their closing summit declaration, then tweeting while on his way to Singapore that he had changed his mind.
Russia also was skeptical. “Trump’s words that the process of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula will start ‘very, very soon’ is more of a wish than a fact,” Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the upper house of Russia’s parliament, wrote on his Facebook page.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz tweeted that the meeting was “grounds for hope” for disarmament and peace on the Korean Peninsula “even if there’s a long path ahead.”
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen called the summit “historic,” though added that Pyongyang has failed to live up to previous disarmament deals.
In China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that United Nations sanctions against North Korea could be suspended or lifted in accordance with the North’ s actions.
Japan’s largest newspaper, the Yomiuri, printed a onepage “extra” edition in both Japanese and English that was distributed free in major cities 90minutes after the meeting began.
Passersby outside a Tokyo train station wondered if progress would be made on the fate of Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe thanked Trump for raising the abduction issue with Kim.