Experts caution that by pushing to meet directly with Kim, Trump is muddying plans for working-level talks
In announcing his interest in holding another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, U. S. President Donald Trump appears to be going against his administration’s plan to have working-level officials lead denuclearization talks, analysts say.
On his flight back to Washington from the G-20 Summit in Argentina in early December, Trump told reporters that a second summit with Kim will likely take place in January or February of 2019.
While the United States remains committed to talks with North Korea, it is unclear if Trump’s diplomacy can make progress with Pyongyang. In what appeared to be a blow to the administration’s efforts to denuclearize the isolated country, North Korea’s state media said Thursday the country will not give up its nuclear weapons unless the U. S. first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat.
“When we refer to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it means the removal of all sources of nuclear threat not only from the North and the South but also from all neighboring areas targeting the peninsula,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.
The struggle over the term “denuclearization” was a sticking point even before Trump and Kim met for the first time in June in Singapore, where they issued a vague statement on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Since then, there has been little apparent progress in the talks. Trump’s willingness to meet with Kim again was seen as a high-level intervention to break the impasse.
