Trump: Summit with Kim set
President Donald Trump teases that the time and place have been set for the summit with North Korea and says withdrawing U.S. troops from the South is “not on the table.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump offered his latest teaser Friday for a historic U.S. summit with North Korea: The time and place have been set but he’s not saying when and where.
But the White House did announce the details of a separate meeting this month between Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, as the U.S. administration pushed back on a report Trump is considering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the allied nation.
Trump and Moon would meet at the White House on May 22 to “continue their close coordination on developments regarding the Korean Peninsula” following the April 28 meeting between Moon and Kim Jong Un. They will also discuss the U.S. president’s own upcoming summit with the North Korean leader, a statement said.
This week, Trump expressed a preference for holding the “big event” with Kim in the demilitarized zone or DMZ between the two Koreas, where Moon and Kim met. He also said Singapore was in contention to host what will be the first summit between a U.S. and a North Korean leader.
According to South Korea, Kim has said he would be willing to give up his nukes if the United States commits to a formal end to the Korean War and pledges not to attack the North. But his exact demands for relinquishing weapons that his nation spent decades building remains unclear.
Trump said that withdrawing U.S. forces from South Korea is “not on the table.” Some 28,500 U.S. forces are based in the allied nation, a military presence that has been preserved to deter North Korea since the war ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.
“Now I have to tell you, at some point into the future, I would like to save the money,” Trump said later as he prepared to board Air Force One. “You know we have 32,000 troops there but I think a lot of great things will happen but troops are not on the table. Absolutely.”
The New York Times reported Trump has asked the Pentagon to prepare options plans for drawing down American troops. It cited unnamed officials as saying that wasn’t intended to be a bargaining chip with Kim, but reflected that a prospective peace treaty between the Koreas could diminish the need for U.S. forces in South Korea.
National security adviser John Bolton, who was due to meet his South Korean counterpart Chung Eui-yong in Washington on Friday, called the Times report “utter nonsense.”
During his presidential campaign, Trump complained that South Korea does not do enough to financially support the American military commitment.
In March, Washington and Seoul began negotiations on how much South Korea should offset the costs of the deployment in the coming years. Under the current agreement that expires at the end of 2018, the South provides about $830 million per year.