[The joint statement said the two nations would hold “follow-on negotiations” led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a high-level North Korean official “at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes” of the summit meeting.]
By Mark Landler
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President
Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea met for the first time before
heading
to a one-on-one meeting.Published OnJune 11, 2018CreditImage
by
Doug Mills/The New York Times
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SINGAPORE — President Trump shook hands with
Kim Jong-un of North Korea on Tuesday and offered a major concession during the
first summit meeting between their nations, a momentous step in an improbable
courtship between the world’s largest nuclear power and the most reclusive one.
Brash, impulsive leaders who only a few
months ago taunted each other across a nuclear abyss, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim set
aside their threats in a gamble that for now, at least, personal diplomacy can
counteract decades of enmity and distrust.
Emerging from a day of talks in Singapore and
speaking to reporters for more than an hour, Mr. Trump said that he was
suspending joint military exercises with South Korean forces and that he was
confident Mr. Kim would begin dismantling his nuclear arsenal “very quickly.”
But Mr. Trump said economic sanctions against
the North would remain in place until the North did more.
Mr. Trump’s decision to suspend the war games
— which he described as “very expensive” but also “very provocative” given the
continuing negotiations — appeared to take South Korea by surprise.
It was the latest twist in the international
drama over the fate of the North’s nuclear program and a complete reversal by
the Trump administration, which had previously said the exercises were
important to defend an ally and not negotiable. It was also a remarkable bet by
Mr. Trump that he can persuade Mr. Kim to follow through on pledges to
surrender his nuclear weapons that are almost identical to those the North has
made — and broken — in the past.
“We’re very proud of what took place today,”
Mr. Trump said. “I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean
Peninsula is going to be a very much different situation than it has in the
past.”
In a televised ceremony in which the two
leaders signed a joint statement, Mr. Kim thanked Mr. Trump for making their
face-to-face talks possible. “We had a historic meeting and decided to leave
the past behind,” he said, adding that “the world will see a major change.”
In the statement they signed, Mr. Trump
“committed to provide security guarantees” to North Korea, and Mr. Kim
“reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula.”
But the statement did not go much further
than previous ones and was short on details, including any timetable or
verification measures.
Asked if Mr. Kim had agreed to denuclearize,
Mr. Trump said, “We’re starting that process very quickly — very, very quickly
— absolutely.”
The joint statement said the two nations
would hold “follow-on negotiations” led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a
high-level North Korean official “at the earliest possible date, to implement
the outcomes” of the summit meeting.
It also said the two countries would “join
their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime” on the divided
peninsula, meaning talks to reduce military tensions that could eventually lead
to a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War.
The day began with a carefully choreographed
encounter in which Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim strode toward each other, arms
extended, in the red-carpeted reception area of a Singapore hotel built on the
site of a British colonial outpost.
Posing before a wall of American and North
Korean flags, Mr. Trump put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. Then the
two, alone except for their interpreters, walked off to meet privately in an
attempt to resolve the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program.
“I feel really great,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s
going to be a great discussion and, I think, tremendous success. I think it’s
going to be really successful, and I think we will have a terrific
relationship. I have no doubt.”
A more sober-sounding Mr. Kim said: “It was
not easy to get here. The past worked as fetters on our limbs, and the old
prejudices and practices worked as obstacles on our way forward. But we
overcame all of them, and we are here today.”
Later, as they reconvened with top aides, Mr.
Trump declared of the nuclear impasse, “Working together, we will get it taken
care of.”
Mr. Kim responded, “There will be challenges
ahead, but we will work with Trump.”
Their negotiators had failed to make much
headway in working-level meetings before the meeting, leaving Mr. Trump and Mr.
Kim with little common ground ahead of what could be months or even years of
talks.
But this was a negotiation that followed no
known playbook: Two headstrong men — one 34 years old, the other 71, products
of wealth and privilege, but with lives so dissimilar they were practically
from different planets — coming together to search for a deal that eluded their
predecessors.
“I just think it’s going to work out very
nicely,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, with the confident tone he has used from the
moment in March when he accepted Mr. Kim’s invitation to meet.
But even as he spoke, American and North
Korean diplomats were struggling to bridge gaps on some of the most basic
issues dividing the two sides, including the terms and timing under which the
North would surrender its nuclear arsenal.
At least 2,500 journalists from around the
world were on hand to chronicle what some officials said would amount to an
extravagant meet-and-greet exercise. Even if successful, Mr. Pompeo predicted,
it would only inaugurate a lengthy, complicated and risky process.
Still, the summit meeting represented a
turnaround that would have been inconceivable just a few months ago, when the
men’s verbal sparring included threats of a nuclear conflict that rattled
friend and foe alike.
In the last year alone, Mr. Kim has conducted
his nation’s most powerful nuclear test and developed missiles capable of
striking American cities. Mr. Trump responded last August by threatening to
unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Then, in January, there was a sudden change
in tone. Mr. Kim, in a gesture of reconciliation, offered to send athletes to
the Winter Olympics in South Korea — the first act in a public relations
makeover for the young dictator, who only a few months later invited Mr. Trump
to meet with him.
Singapore’s government turned this futuristic
city-state into a giant stage for Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim. In addition to their
one-on-one meeting, they met with their aides at their sides and again over
lunch — all at a well-guarded luxury hotel on the island of Sentosa, where
tourists and locals visit the Universal Studios theme park or the
crescent-shaped beach.
For Mr. Trump, Monday was a brief
intermission between the tumult of an acrimonious Group of 7 meeting in Canada
over the weekend and the looming spectacle of his encounter with Mr. Kim.
Mr. Trump stayed largely out of sight in the
Shangri-La Hotel, where he had been closeted with aides since landing in
Singapore on Sunday evening. Less than a mile away, as if in a rival armed
camp, Mr. Kim billeted at his own equally fortified hotel, the St. Regis.
But on Monday evening, Mr. Kim went out on
the town. Engaging in some role reversal with Mr. Trump, he visited the Marina
Bay Sands Hotel, a striking resort owned by the Las Vegas casino magnate
Sheldon G. Adelson. He took selfies with Singaporean officials.
There were other reminders of the bizarre
turns this story has taken: On Tuesday, the former pro basketball player Dennis
Rodman, who befriended Mr. Kim during trips to Pyongyang, turned up in
Singapore to give a tearful television interview about his role in trying to
thaw relations between the two countries.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, refused to let go of
his rancorous clash with European allies over trade. On Monday morning, from
his hotel, he unleashed a fusillade of angry posts on Twitter about what he
said were the predatory trade practices of Canada and several European
countries.
“Sorry, we cannot let our friends, or
enemies, take advantage of us on Trade anymore,” the president said in a tweet.
“We must put the American worker first!”
Mr. Trump’s harsh words about the nation’s
closest allies stood in stark contrast to his expression of sunny feelings
toward Mr. Kim, a brutal dictator who is known for human rights abuses and who
ordered the execution of his own uncle.
“Great to be in Singapore, excitement in the
air!” tweeted Mr. Trump, before setting foot outside his hotel.
To negotiate the terms of the joint
statement, the administration recruited Sung Y. Kim, a seasoned North Korea
negotiator now serving as American ambassador to the Philippines, to lead that
effort. Ambassador Kim and a small group of diplomats held a series of talks
last week with the North Koreans in Panmunjom, the so-called truce village in
the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
People briefed on the meetings said American
negotiators had found it difficult to make significant headway with the North
Koreans, in part because the White House did not back them up in taking a hard
line.
In his public statements before the talks,
Mr. Trump showed gradually greater flexibility toward North Korea, saying he
viewed its disarmament as a “process,” rather than something to be done all at
once, and disavowing the phrase “maximum pressure,” after making it the
centerpiece of his policy.
But Mr. Trump also included his national
security adviser, John R. Bolton, in the meeting with Mr. Kim. Mr. Bolton is a
lightning rod in Pyongyang because of his proposal that North Korea disarm
voluntarily as Libya did in 2003 — a concession that ended badly, when Libya’s
leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, was killed by his own people in an uprising
less than a decade later in the wake of a NATO air campaign.
South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who
worked intensely to help broker the meeting, underlined its historic nature.
Mr. Moon urged a “bold give-and-take” to make
it successful. But he said that regardless of whatever agreement was produced,
it would be just the beginning of what could be a long, bumpy process of
ridding North Korea of a nuclear arsenal it has spent decades building.
“Even after the two heads of state open the
gate,” Mr. Moon said, “it will take a long process to achieve a complete solution.
We don’t know how long it will take: one year, two years or more.”
Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from
Seoul, South Korea.
