Trump ready to meet with Kim ‘soon’
Preparations under way for a second presidential meeting with the North Korean leader
Confronting the dangers of North Korea’s nuclear threat, US President Donald Trump arrived at the United Nations on Monday striking a far less ominous tone than a year ago, announcing he likely will hold a second summit with Kim Jong Un “quite soon.”
Twelve months after Trump stood at the rostrum of the UN General Assembly and derided Kim as “Rocket Man,” the push to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula is a work in progress, although fears of war have given way to dreams of rapprochement. The president’s bellicose denunciations of Pyongyang have largely given way to hopeful notes.
“It was a different world,” Trump said on Monday of his one-time moniker for the North Korean leader. “That was a dangerous time. This is one year later, a much different time.”
He added that preparations are underway by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a second presidential meeting with Kim “quite soon.”
Trump arrived at the UN on Monday morning for a meeting on the global drug trade, ahead of a sit-down with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who comes bearing a personal message to Trump from Kim after their inter-Korean talks last week.
Trump and Moon are expected to sign a new version of the USSouth Korean trade agreement, one of Trump’s first successes in his effort to renegotiate trade deals on more favourable terms for the US. Even so, some US officials worry that South Korea’s eagerness to restore relations with the North could reduce sanctions pressure on Kim’s government, hampering efforts to negotiate a nuclear accord.
The nuclear threat was on the agenda at Trump’s first meeting in New York, a dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Manhattan on Sunday night. Abe stands first among world leaders in cultivating a close relationship with the president through displays of flattery that he has used to advance his efforts to influence the unpredictable American leader.
“We have our eyes wide open,” Pompeo told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “There is a long ways to go to get Chairman Kim to live up to the commitment that he made to President Trump and, indeed, to the demands of the world in the UN Security Council resolutions to get him to fully denuclearise.”
American interests
Redoubling his commitment to “America First” on the most global of stages, Trump will stress his dedication to the primacy of US interests while competing with Western allies for an advantage on trade and shining a spotlight on the threat that he says Iran poses to the Middle East and beyond.
Scores of world leaders, even those representing America’s closest friends, remain wary of Trump. In the 12 months since his last visit to the UN, the Republican president has jolted the global status quo by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, starting trade conflicts with China and the West and embracing Russia’s Vladimir Putin even as the investigation into the US president’s ties to Moscow moves closer to the Oval Office.
Long critical of the United Nations, Trump delivered a warning shot ahead of his arrival by declaring that the world body had “not lived up to” its potential.
“It’s always been surprising to me that more things aren’t resolved,” Trump said in a weekend video message, “because you have all of these countries getting together in one location but it doesn’t seem to get there. I think it will.”