Advertisement
Trump plays down chances of quick breakthrough, North Koreans bring letter
North Korean envoy Kim Yong Chol speaks ahead of a working dinner with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York, U.S., May 30, 2018. PHOTO BY REUTERS/U.S. Department of State
By Yara Bayoumy and Steve Holland
31/05/2018
NEW YORK/ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday played down the chances of a quick breakthrough in getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms as a delegation from Pyongyang headed to meet him, carrying a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un which suggested a proposed summit may be back on.
In a brief interview with Reuters aboard Air Force One on the way to Texas, Trump said he was still hoping for an unprecedented meeting with Kim on June 12 in Singapore to push for North Korean "denuclearization."
"I’d like to see it done in one meeting," he said. "But often times that’s not the way deals work. There’s a very good chance that it won’t be done in one meeting or two meetings or three meetings. But it’ll get done at some point."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said a North Korean delegation, headed by high-ranking official Kim Yong Chol, would make a rare visit the White House on Friday and give Trump a letter from Kim.
The letter appeared to be in response to a comment from Trump last Thursday when he canceled the summit, accusing Pyongyang of hostility, but urged the North Korean leader to "call me or write" if he had a change of heart.
Kim's letter seemed to be a sign that the summit might now go ahead. There has been a flurry of diplomatic efforts in the past few days to get the summit back on track.
North Korea, whose nuclear ambitions have been a source of tension for decades, has made advances in missile technology in recent years but Trump has sworn not to allow it to develop nuclear missiles that could hit the United States.
He wants North Korea to "denuclearize," meaning to get rid of its nuclear arms, in return for relief from economic sanctions but the leadership in Pyongyang is believed to regard nuclear weapons as crucial to its survival and has rejected unilaterally disarming.
The North Korean visit to the White House would be the first there by a high-level official from the secretive state since 2000 when senior figure Jo Myong Rok met President Bill Clinton.
'REAL PROGRESS'
While Trump has put great importance on sealing a nuclear deal with North Korea, he has bucked traditional U.S. foreign policy by alienating America's European and NATO allies.
He snubbed France, Germany and Britain by pulling out of a nuclear agreement with Iran and upset the Europeans, as well as neighbors Canada and Mexico, with protectionist trade policies meant to safeguard U.S. jobs.
Trump and autocratic North Korean leader Kim traded insults and threats of war last year but in March the bellicose rhetoric gave way to a proposal for a historic summit.
“It does no good if we are in a place where we don’t think there is real opportunity to place them together,” Pompeo said at a news conference on Thursday after two days of talks with Kim Yong Chol in New York. "We have made real progress toward that in the last 72 hours."
Kim Yong Chol is a close aide of Kim Jong Un and is vice chairman of the ruling Workers' Party's Central Committee.
The United States and South Korea blacklisted the official for supporting the North's nuclear and missile programs in 2010 and 2016, respectively. He has been granted special permission for official travel to the United States.
During his tenure as a senior intelligence official, Kim was accused by South Korea of masterminding deadly attacks on a South Korean navy ship and an island in 2010. U.S intelligence linked him to a cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014.
North Korea denied any involvement in both attacks.
The United States, in return for North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons, could potentially loosen economic sanctions, leading to possible food and other aid to North Korea and improved ties with South Korea.
Pompeo warned the path to better relations will not be easy.
"This is going to be a process that will take days and weeks to work our way through," Pompeo said. He said "there is no daylight" between the United States and its allies South Korea and Japan on solving the North Korea issue.
The United States and South Korea have technically been at war with the North for decades, even though the Korean War's combat ended in 1953, because a peace agreement was never signed.
China, North Korea's main trading partner and a ally, said it supported and encouraged the "emerging good faith" between the United States and North Korea.
"At the same time as working to achieve the goal of denuclearization, we should also build long-term and effective initiatives to keep peace on the Korean peninsula," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said in Beijing.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met North Korean leader Kim in Pyongyang on Thursday and invited him to visit, moving to raise Moscow's profile in international efforts to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula.
(Reporting by Yara Bayoumy and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Daniel Bases in New York and Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Richard Cowan and David Brunnstrom in Washington Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Bill Trott and Grant McCool)
Add new comment