Trump keeps open possibility of leaving talks
WASHINGTON: US president Donald Trump has said that if he felt his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is “not going to be fruitful,” he will not go through with it and may even walk out of the meeting.
The two countries are working towards a meeting in early June, or even earlier, as Trump has indicated, and the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is the stated US goal. Pyongyang has said it is willing to discuss it, but that may not necessarily mean it’s willing to give up its nuclear arsenal.
“I hope to have a very successful meeting,” Trump said in a news briefing with visiting Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday. “If we don’t think it’s going to be successful … we won’t have it. We won’t have it. If I think that it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we’re not going to go.”
And, he went on to say, even when he is there and “if the meeting … is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting, and we’ll continue what we’re doing or whatever it is that we’ll continue.”
That would mean scaling up sanctions and pressure, which he has said, forced the North Korean leader to seek talks.
On Thursday, US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said countries should continue to put financial and diplomatic pres- sure on Pyongyang to surrender its banned nuclear weapons.
The US delegation would be looking for support at a two-week conference on the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) which opens next Monday in Geneva.
Pyongyang announced its withdrawal in 2003 from the landmark pact .
“The United States remains committed to complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea,” Wood told a news conference. “In terms of the pressure campaign, the things we have been very interested in are maintaining the pressure, meaning enforcing sanctions, ensuring that the North is not able to get access to funds that help further its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes,” he added.
That “maximum” pressure would continue until Pyongyang takes steps that clearly indicate it is “serious about getting rid of its nuclear weapons programme, he said.