As N. Korea summit nears, tone shifts
Trump shares doubts about meeting June 12
WASHINGTON – President Trump cast new uncertainty Tuesday on his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying the June 12 date could slide back on the calendar — or it may not happen at all.
“There’s a chance — there’s a very substantial chance — it won’t work out,” he said, striking a more doubtful tone about the summit than he has since he agreed to it two months ago.
“You never know about deals,” he said. “I’ve made a lot of deals. You never really know.”
That assessment came as Trump met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House. The two leaders had expected to plot strategy for what would be a historic summit with North Korea — but now appeared to be looking at an increasing likelihood the summit won’t happen.
“I think the summit’s dead,” said Harry Kazianis of the Center for the National Interest. “And I think the reason it’s dead is, quite frankly, that the two sides are too far apart.”
No sooner was a day and place set — June 12 in Singapore — than the assumptions underpinning the summit began to erode. Trump had agreed to meet with North Korea’s leader based on South Korea’s representations that North Korea would agree to the talks without preconditions.
But in recent weeks, North Korea
has ramped up its rhetoric, insisting that the United States and South Korea end joint military exercises and suggesting it doesn’t want to give up its nuclear weapons after all.
Trump attributed that change in tone to Kim’s second visit to China on May 8, when he met with President Xi Jinping. “I will say this: There was a somewhat different attitude after that meeting,” Trump said. “Maybe nothing happened. I’m not blaming anybody. I can’t say I’m happy about it.”
Trump has relied on a “maximum pressure” strategy that counts on China’s willingness to enforce international sanctions on North Korea. China is the regime’s largest trading partner.
But Trump also has been navigating his own delicate trade negotiations with China, even agreeing to reconsider penalties against Chinese telecom company ZTE for violating the North Korean sanctions. “I think that President Xi is a world-class poker player,” Trump said.
Moon said Tuesday that he knows there are “very many skeptical views” about whether the summit will succeed, but he said this time could be different.
“This will be the first time there will be an agreement among the leaders. The person who is in charge is President Trump. President Trump has been able to achieve this dramatic change,” he said.
But Moon’s own national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, told reporters on his way to Washington that South Korea was making contingency plans in case the summit doesn’t pan out.
“We believe there is a 99.9% chance the North Korea-U.S. summit will be held as scheduled,” Chung said, according to the Yonhap news agency. “But we’re just preparing for many different possibilities.”
It was Chung who first cracked an opening to North Korea, using shuttle diplomacy to deliver a message to the White House from Pyongyang in March. He told Trump that Kim was willing to meet without preconditions.
“This has always been a Hail Mary,” Kazianis said. “But we all forgot something: North Korea will always be North Korea.”