Both the White House and South Korean officials said the meeting was agreed to. Now apparently it is subject to new preconditions.
This post has been updated to reflect a new anonymous White House comment.
Apparently President Trump’s commitment to meet with Kim Jong Un was to be taken seriously, not necessarily literally .
South Korean officials said Thursday night at the White House that Trump “said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.” The White House followed that up with a statement saying the president “ will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined .”
So invitation accepted, right? Just awaiting the details, it seems.
Except… maybe not. Appearing at the daily White House briefing Friday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested the meeting was not a done deal. She seemed to retroactively attach denuclearization preconditions to the whole thing.
“The president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions take place by North Korea,” Sanders said, specifically mentioning denuclearization. “Look, they’ve got to follow through on the promises they’ve made.”
But the original agreement, as outlined by the South Koreans, was only that Kim would halt nuclear and missile tests while talks were underway. Until Friday, there was no indication it had to scale back its program beforehand. The South Koreans said Kim was “committed to denuclearization,” but they did not say he would denuclearize before the meeting as a precondition.
