Trump, Kim to hold summit in Singapore
Singapore picked for sense of neutrality, security for leaders
President Trump says he will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12, locking in a historic, high-stakes summit aimed at curbing the rogue nation’s nuclear program.
WASHINGTON — Envisioning “a very special moment for world peace,” President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for highly anticipated summit talks in Singapore on June 12.
Final details in place, Trump and Kim agreed to the first faceto-face North Korea-U.S. summit since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. It’s the most consequential and perhaps riskiest foreign policy effort so far in Trump’s presidency as North Korea’s nuclear program approaches a treacherous milestone — the capacity to strike the continental U.S. with a thermonuclear warhead.
Trump says the U.S. is aiming for “denuclearization” of the entire Korean peninsula, but he has yet to fill in just what steps that might include and what the timing would be.
“We’re starting off on a new footing,” Trump said of himself and Kim.
He and Kim “will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” he said of the summit later on Twitter. He told reporters, “I think it’s going to be a big success.”
Kim has suspended nuclear and missile tests and put his nuclear program up for negotiation, but questions remain about how serious his offer is and what disarmament steps he would be willing to take. The White House has said withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from South Korea is “not on the table.”
He had wanted to hold the summit in the demilitarized zone
between the two Koreas but yielded to the concerns of officials who thought a DMZ meeting would focus attention on relations between the North and South rather than the nuclear question. So, why Singapore? White House spokesman Raj Shah said the country has relationships with both the U.S. and North Korea, meaning both presidents’ security — and a sense of neutrality — can be assured.
Located at the southern tip of Malaysia, the prosperous city state is a regional Southeast Asia hub where the free enterprise philosophy welcomes trading partners from everywhere. It has close diplomatic and military ties with the U.S. and yet is also familiar ground for North Korea, with which it established diplomatic relations in 1975.
“Since their independence, they’ve very deliberately developed a reputation as an honest broker between East and West,” said David Adelman, the former U.S. ambassador.