The Columbus Dispatch

Trump: Kim regrets missiles, wants to meet

- By Jill Colvin

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. — President Donald Trump said Saturday that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un wants to meet once again to “start negotiatio­ns” after joint U.s.-south Korea military exercises end. He also said Kim apologized for the recent flurry of short-range missile tests that has rattled U.S. allies in the region.

Trump tweeted more details from the “beautiful” three-page letter he told reporters on Friday that he’d received from Kim. Trump, who is on vacation at his golf club in New Jersey, said Kim spent much of his letter complainin­g about “the ridiculous and expensive exercises” that North Korea sees as a threat.

He said Kim offered him “a small apology” for the recent tests and assured him “that this testing would stop when the exercises end.” North Korea on Saturday fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, according to South Korea’s military — the fifth round of launches in less than three weeks.

“I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future!” Trump wrote.

The two leaders have met three times — in Singapore and Hanoi and at the Korean Demilitari­zed Zone — but critics say Trump has received few concession­s in the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for the meetings.

At their second summit in Vietnam in February, Trump rejected Kim’s demand for widespread sanctions relief in exchange for dismantlin­g the North’s main nuclear complex, a partial disarmamen­t step.

The U.S. and South Korea have scaled down their major military exercises since Trump and Kim’s first summit in June 2018. But the North insists even the downsized drills violate agreements between Kim and Trump and compel it to “develop, test and deploy the powerful physical means essential for national defense.”

When they last met in June of this year, Trump and Kim agreed to resume workinglev­el nuclear talks that have been stalled since February.

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