Call & Times

Trump: NKorea summit is ‘one-time shot’ for Kim

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SINGAPORE ( AP) — President Donald Trump cast his Tuesday summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as a “one-time shot” for the autocratic leader to ditch his nuclear weapons and enter the community of nations, saying he would know within moments if Kim is serious about the talks.

Trump said Saturday he was embarking on a “mission of peace,” as he departed the Group of Seven meeting in Canada to fly to the summit site in Singapore. Saying he has a “clear objective in mind” to convince Kim to abandon his nuclear program in exchange for unspecifie­d “protection­s” from the U.S., Trump acknowledg­ed that the direction of the high-stakes meeting is unpredicta­ble, adding it “will always be spur of the moment.”

“It’s unknown territory in the truest sense, but I really feel confident,” he told reporters. “I feel that Kim Jong Un wants to do something great for his people and he has that opportunit­y and he won’t have that opportunit­y again.”

“It’s a one-time shot and I think it’s going to work out very well,” he said.

The Trump-Kim meeting be the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Unlike traditiona­l summits between heads of state, where most of the work is completed in advance of a photo-op, U.S. officials say the only thing certain ahead of these talks will be their unpredicta­bility.

Raising expectatio­ns in advance of the meeting, Trump said the outcome will rely heavily on his own instincts. The U.S. president, who prides himself on his deal-making prowess, said he will know “within the first minute” of meeting Kim whether the North Korean leader is serious about the nuclear negotiatio­ns.

“I think I’ll know pretty quickly whether or not, in my opinion, something positive will happen. And if I think it won’t happen, I’m not going to waste my time. I don’t want to waste his time,” Trump said.

“This is a leader who really is an unknown personalit­y,” Trump added of Kim. “People don’t know much about him. I think that he’s going to surprise on the upside, very much on the upside.”

The Kim sit-down comes as Trump’s combative style of diplomacy has been on stark display this weekend in Canada during the annual Group of Seven summit. Tensions flared between Trump and U.S. allies over his protection­ist economic policies and decisions to exit the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord.

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