Kim, Trump unity ‘a facade’

WITS PROFESSOR SAYS US PRESIDENT WON’T ACHIEVE GOOD RESULTS

‘North Korea still reluctant to denuclearise as it always promised it would.’

While North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s expression of faith in US President Donald Trump and the latter’s positive response was as a catalyst towards improving relations, a senior political analyst is sceptical.

John Stremlau, international relations professor at Wits University, dismissed Trump and Kim’s discussion as nothing but hot air that would go nowhere because North Korea was still reluctant to denuclearise as it had always promised it would.

Stremlau added Trump was also not the best leader to negotiate good results out of Kim because “he is a bad man”.

“I’m still sceptical of their last meeting, it was a media event.

Their talk had gone nowhere; it is not easy for North Korea to denuclearise,” he said.

On Thursday, Trump responded positively to Kim’s statement that he had faith in him and that he wanted to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula during Trump’s first term of office.

Both Kim and Trump conveyed their messages to each other via the South Korean officials who visited the North to arrange a summit between leaders of the two Koreas for September 18-20.

In his Twitter response to Kim yesterday, Trump said: “Kim Jong-un of North Korea proclaims ‘unwavering faith’ in President Trump. Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!”

Trump’s tweet came as relations between him and Kim took a bit of a knock following their summit in Singapore in June, when Kim appeared to dither on the reduction of his country’s nuclear weapons.

Kim’s statement and Trump’s response have helped to break the ice. Kim demanded that his goodwill measures should be met with goodwill by Trump.

Trump’s “we will get it done

together” tweet and Kim’s reiteration to denuclearise sooner than later, rekindled optimism from both sides about the prospects for improved interaction between

Pyongyang and Washington.

The accumulation of nuclear arms has been the bone of contention between the US and North Korea.

Pyongyang committed to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and undertook to suspend long-range missile tests.