N-DEAL BUT NO FINE PRINT OR TIMELINE
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has agreed to completely denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in exchange for security guarantees, according to an agreement signed between him and President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
A New York Times report described it as a momentous step in an improbable courtship between the world’s largest nuclear power and the most reclusive one. The two leaders, only a few months ago, were provoking each other across the nuclear divide, threatening to blast the other into oblivion.
A big take away for Trump is that the US will be stopping the war games in the Korean peninsula, which burn a big hole in the American pockets.
This, the NYT said, was a complete reversal by the Trump administration, which had previously said the military exercises were important to defend an ally (South Korea) and not negotiable.
Trump also said he wants to withdraw American troops stationed in South Korea, as he had promised during his election campaign.
However, Kim has not given any timeline for the rollback. He merely said he would also begin dismantling his nuclear arsenal “very quickly.” Trump, too, said economic sanctions against the North would remain in place until the North did more.
However, experts said a complete rollback could take ten to fifteen years.
In a televised ceremony, in which the two leaders signed a joint statement, Kim thanked Trump for making their faceto-face talks possible. “We had a historic meeting and decided to leave the past behind,” he said, adding that “the world will see a major change.”
But the statement did not go much further than previous ones and was short on details, including any timetable or verification measures.
Just before the talks began, a sober-sounding Kim said: “It was not easy to get here. The past worked as fetters on our limbs, and the old prejudices and practices worked as obstacles on our way forward. But we overcame all of them, and we are here today.”
After the meeting, Kim said: ‘‘There will be challenges ahead, but we will work with Trump.”
According to the NYT, the summit meeting represented a turnaround that would have been inconceivable just a few months ago, when the men’s verbal sparring included threats of a nuclear conflict that rattled friend and foe alike.
Trump’s harsh words about the nation’s closest allies recently at a G-7 meet stood in stark contrast to his expression of sunny feelings toward Kim, a brutal dictator who is known for human rights abuses and who ordered the execution of his own uncle, NYT added.