Trump says North Korea made major nuclear concessions before summit
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that North Korea had made concessions to the US in advance of a potential summit with Kim Jong-un in the coming months, while the US has not given up anything.
Mr Trump cited pledges on denuclearisation, missile testing, research and on closing some nuclear sites.
“I’m saying to myself, wait a minute, all of these things he’s given up and we haven’t even really that much asked them,” Mr Trump told television programme Fox & Friends.
“We would have asked them, but they gave it up before I even asked.”
The president’s remarks came ahead of a summit scheduled for Friday between Mr Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a US ally. That meeting, to be held on the militarised frontier between the Koreas, will be the clearest sign yet of whether it is possible to peacefully negotiate nuclear weapons away from the North.
The US-North Korea summit is expected next month or early in June.
North Korea recently announced it would close its nuclear test site and suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests, and Mr Kim has indicated he is also ready to discuss denuclearisation.
But it remains unclear whether he would be willing to give up nuclear weapons his nation already has, and what he would want in return.
Mr Trump has argued that the only concession he has made to North Korea was his surprise decision last month to accept Mr Kim’s invitation for a meeting – which will be the first between the leaders of the United States and North Korea during six decades of hostility.
“I never gave up anything,” Mr Trump said.
The US president acknowledged that the rhetoric he and Mr Kim had engaged in over the past year and the schoolyard taunts of nuclear buttons was “very, very nasty” and heightened fears of nuclear war. “This is a much more dangerous ballgame now, but I will tell you it’s going very well.”
He said “the nuclear war would have happened if you have weak people”.
Mr Trump also revealed more information about CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s trip to North Korea this month, saying Mr Pompeo was not supposed to meet Mr Kim, but that they ended up talking for more than an hour. Mr Pompeo was the most senior US official to meet a North Korean leader since 2000.
“They had a great meeting,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Kim is scheduled to cross the border on Friday for the first summit with South Korea in more than a decade, as the old foes seek to end their decades-long conflict and ease tensions over the North’s nuclear weapons programme.
The summit is expected to set the stage for Mr Kim’s meeting with Mr Trump, in what will be an unprecedented first encounter between sitting leaders of the two countries.
Just months ago, Mr Trump and Mr Kim were trading insults as North Korea’s rapid advances in pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting the United States raised fears of renewed conflict on the Korean peninsula.
Mr Moon will greet Mr Kim at the military demarcation line at 9.30am local time, Reuters reported, making Mr Kim the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the 1950-1953 Korean War.
The two will be escorted by South Korean honour guards to an official welcoming ceremony before beginning official dialogue at 10.30am at Peace House, a South Korean building in the village of Panmunjom.
In a dramatic gesture just days before the summit, Mr Kim made his announcement that North Korea would suspend nuclear and long-range missile tests and dismantle its only known nuclear test site.
South Korea hopes North Korea’s leader will directly confirm his commitment to complete denuclearisation of the peninsula.
The neighbours expect to release a joint statement on Friday that could address denuclearisation and peace, and an improvement in relations, South Korean officials said.
This is a much more dangerous ballgame now, but I will tell you it’s going very well DONALD TRUMP US Presidentl