Trump won’t meet Kim unless he sees ‘concrete actions’

DONALD TRUMP’S meeting with Kim Jong-un will not take place unless North Korea takes “concrete and verifiable actions”, according to a White House spokesman.

Sarah Sanders said intense US pressure had already won promises to halt nuclear testing and denuclearise, but that the president needed more if he was to go ahead with the plan.

Her words came a day after Mr Trump stunned the world by saying he would accept Mr Kim’s invitation to talks. It would be the first meeting between leaders from the two nations.

China and South Korea welcomed the move, which could defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula and reduce fears of nuclear war, although analysts warned that Mr Trump was in danger of giving Mr Kim an easy PR victory without securing anything in return.

White House officials scrambled yesterday to add conditions and insisted there would be no change to its policy of “maximum pressure” on the secretive regime.

Ms Sanders said Pyongyang’s actions would have to match its rhetoric but gave no further details of what steps were needed.

“The president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions take place by North Korea, so the president will actually be getting something,” she said.

The US has long said it wants any talks to focus on Pyongyang giving up its nuclear weapon programmes.

Mike Pence, the vice-president, said the North Koreans were coming to the table with “zero concessions” from the US. “Our resolve is undeterred and our policy remains the same: all sanctions remain in place and the maximum pressure campaign will continue until North Korea takes concrete, permanent, and verifiable steps to end their nuclear programme,” he said.

Such a meeting would have been unthinkable for most of the past year as Mr Trump threatened to “rain fire and fury” on North Korea if it continued its provocative missile and bomb tests.

The two men traded playground insults – Mr Trump called his rival “little rocket man” while Mr Kim responded by describing the president as a “senior dotard” – while the US reviewed its military options. The agreement to meet came in typical Trump fashion. The president reportedly heard South Korea’s envoy to Pyongyang was in the White House for meetings on Thursday and promptly called Chun Eui-yong to the Oval Office where he was told that Mr Kim had extended an invitation. He then told Mr Chun to announce that the two leaders would meet, blindsiding his staff who were still deciding how best to proceed.

Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, said the news had arrived “like a miracle”, adding: “If Trump and Kim meet following an inter-korean summit, complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula will be put on the right track in earnest,” he said.

Xi Jinping, China’s president, telephoned Mr Trump to say he welcomed the talks and to urge all sides to show goodwill.

“I hope the US and North Korea can get in touch and start dialogue as soon as possible, and strive to obtain positive achievements,” he said separately, according to Xinhua news agency.

Beijing is North Korea’s most important ally and trading partner but has not stood in the way of increasingly tough United Nations sanctions. It has regularly called on Washington and Pyongyang to come together, and blamed mutual suspicions for ongoing tensions.

Overcoming those suspicions will not be easy. Mr Kim has repeatedly said he will not give up his nuclear weapons, while US officials say committing to denuclearisation would be a precondition of any talks.

Victor Cha, who would have been part of the negotiating team had he not been dropped for consideration as ambassador to Seoul after criticising the prospect of military strikes, warned that failed talks could raise the risk of war.

“The unanswered question going forward is what the United States is willing to put on the table for a negotiation,” he wrote in The New York Times. “In years of dealing with North Korea, I have learnt that the regime never gives anything away for free.”

No other details have yet been released of the proposed meeting other than that it will happen by May, suggesting it could come after an inter-korean summit planned for the end of April in the demilitarised zone.

Switzerland says it is ready to play host as a neutral venue, and it was yesterday announced that Ri Yong-ho, the North Korean foreign minister, will visit Sweden in the near future.

Sweden’s embassy in Pyongyang represents US diplomatic interests in North Korea in the absence of US diplomatic relations with the country. The lack of clarity is a reminder of the void at the heart of Mr Trump’s Korean team. The

‘I have learnt that the regime never gives anything away for free’

administration’s top official on North Korea retired last month and the White House has yet to appoint an ambassador to Seoul.

Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, welcomed the talks, tweeting: “Important Kim Jong-un comes in good faith ready to fulfil obligations under [United Nations] resolutions. Need to keep up pressure alongside engagement.”

But hopes of a definitive deal to bring an end to military tensions have been tempered by past failures.

The last attempt to bring peace to the Korean peninsula, the six-party talks, began in 2003 between officials from South Korea, Japan, Russia, China, North Korea and the US but collapsed in failure six years later. Chris Hill, the former US ambassador to South Korea, told BBC Radio 4: “If it turns into a ‘grip and grin’, this is a huge setback for an already beleaguered president, so I think he needs to be very careful that it not be seen as just a publicity stunt.”

North Korean defectors living in Seoul also expressed deep concern.

Lee Ae-ran, a restaurant owner who fled the North with her family in 1997, said: “The Kim family have never told the truth in the past – to their own people or to other governments when they have negotiations – so why does anyone think they are telling the truth now?”

‘The president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps’

Short fatty, may I introduce old lunatic? At least, that’s how my version of the historic meeting between Donald Trump and North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un will kick off. These were the insults traded by the two leaders last autumn, even as Mr Trump lamented on Twitter: “I try so hard to be his friend!”

But now it’s all go. Mr Trump has astonished the world by agreeing to meet “little rocket man”, as he fondly terms him, after months of threats and economic pressure. Mr Kim has agreed to denuclearisation in return for the meeting, the US president claims, in what appears to be an enormous diplomatic breakthrough. But though the method might look unorthodox, we have been here before.

North Korea has a history of luring the UN and Western powers into talks, while secretly continuing with its nuclear programme. In 1994, it signed an agreement to freeze and then abandon its nuclear programme and Bill Clinton began planning a visit. But the agreement was never fulfilled. Instead, in 2002, the country declared that it had been advancing its nuclear ambitions all along. A similar attempt at talks in 2005 broke down almost immediately and Pyongyang carried on its research and testing missiles. Now, nearly 30 years in, it is on the cusp of mastering miniaturisation, the final step needed to deliver an intercontinental nuclear attack.

If there is a difference this time, it is the position of China. Alongside the UN’S tightening of sanctions on North Korea, the US slapped its own sanctions on Chinese banks that do business there. But more fundamentally, Beijing does not want a rival nuclear power in its backyard and is tightening the screws on its pet rogue state. Since China started to implement the UN restrictions, North Korea has been forced into electricity and fuel rationing.

The fundamental logic has not changed for Mr Kim. He can only guarantee his own defences against coup or attack by developing the ultimate deterrent. So he’s unlikely to give up the fruits of several decades’ work begun by his grandfather.

All of this means that the meeting, though trumpeted far and wide, has no guarantee of taking place. In a phone call to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Mr Trump assured him that it came with conditions attached: North Korea would need to show real commitment to shutting down its nuclear programme. What that means is still a mystery, but if the president is serious, given Pyongyang’s history of deceit, it will be very difficult for the US and its allies to receive enough concrete evidence of goodwill before delivering the photo op.

Mr Trump’s critics accuse him of warmongering and brinkmanship. The truth is that he has inherited a situation with no good options. Talking runs the risk of being played. War carries the virtual certainty of millions of deaths in South Korea and possibly Japan. The president’s actions might look unpredictable and dangerous, but nothing has worked so far. With China seemingly now on side, the real question is whether Beijing has both the will and the means to follow through.

The Telegraph hosted a reader event this week to mark one year until Brexit, which proved to be something of a homecoming for Boris Johnson. The Foreign Secretary, whose appearances are tightly controlled these days, was visibly relieved to address a friendly audience about the issue that will define his legacy. But readers, though receptive, are ever-sceptical. Shirt untucked, Mr Johnson barely paused for breath in his long, unscripted answers to the questions put by Charles Moore, occasionally forgetting his recent vow to unite the country by abandoning talk of “Remainers” and “Leavers”. He rattled entertainingly through all sorts of topics, from regulatory divergence to Theresa May’s newfound commitment to Brexit, the EU lorry safety directive, John Major, the Irish border (there could be “very minimal” checks) and the need for “a bigger bus” on which he’d like to plaster the growing amount Britain would have paid into the EU if it had stayed.

At length, one reader called out, demanding to know why there are few visible signs that our Government is preparing for a “no deal” outcome. Preparing – and letting the world see you prepare – is surely a minimum requirement to retain any negotiating credibility, the reader pointed out.

“Believe me, it is under way,” said Mr Johnson, looking momentarily nonplussed. He decided, none the less, to diverge from the schedule by taking an impromptu round of questions, declaring: “The Russians can wait.” He was soon thrown another curveball. What makes him so confident, asked a reader, that we will be allowed to cherry-pick what sectors will participate in the EU’S single market, as laid out in the plan Theresa May described? Mr Johnson reiterated his idea that trade bodies of German carmakers and the like would eventually bring pressure to bear. That hasn’t happened, of course, but he soon moved on to describe a visit he once made to a successful British company called Niftylift, which, he noted, “actually sells cherry-pickers”.

I can see why Niftylift might be source of government inspiration. One of its products, it advertises, delivers “strength, stability and superb traction” that gives users “confidence to tackle even the toughest jobs”. No10 should take a job lot. FOLLOW Juliet Samuel on Twitter @Citysamuel; READ MORE at telegraph. co.uk/opinion