Trump takes accolades

But plenty of questions remain over Korean summit

PRESIDENT Donald Trump is claiming credit for a historic inter-Korean summit, but now faces a burden in helping turn the Korean leaders’ bold but vague vision for peace into reality after more than six decades of hostility.

Mr Trump must contend with two nagging suspicions: first about his own suitability to conduct that kind of war-andpeace negotiation and succeed where his predecessors have failed; secondly, whether North Korean leader Kim Jong Un really is willing to give up the nuclear weapons his nation took decades acquiring.

“It is still unclear whether North Korea still believes that it can have its cake and eat it too,” said Victor Cha, who until January had been in the running to become Mr Trump’s choice for ambassador to South Korea.

Mr Cha said that while the atmospherics of the inter-Korean summit got an “A” grade, the meeting had failed to clarify whether Mr Kim was willing to give up his nukes or was interested in just freezing his programs in return for sanctions relief and assistance.

At a White House news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Trump basked in the afterglow of the feel-good meeting between Mr Kim and South Korean President Moon Jaein, and said he had a responsibility to try to achieve peace and denuclearisation.

“And if I can’t do it, it’ll be a very tough time for a lot of countries, and a lot of people.

“It’s certainly something that I hope I can do for the world,” he said.

While Mr Moon and Mr Kim pledged to seek a formal end to the Korean War by year’s end and to rid their peninsula of nuclear weapons, they didn’t specify how it would be achieved. And now the pressure to deliver results, at least on the allies’ side, has shifted to Mr Trump.

“There will be a suggestion that the South Koreans have teed it up very well for him and he’s not going to have the option of walking away in a huff,” said Christopher Hill, who was the lead US negotiator with North Korea under the George W. Bush administration.