US President Donald Trump said he was prepared to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in what would be the first face-to-face encounter between the two countries’ leaders and could mark a breakthrough in a standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons.
Kim has “committed to denuclearize” and to suspending nuclear and missile tests, South Korean National Security Director Chung Eui-yong told reporters at the White House on Thursday, after briefing Trump on a meeting South Korean officials held with Kim earlier this week.
Kim and Trump had engaged in an increasingly bellicose exchange of insults over the North’s nuclear and missile programs, which it pursues in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, before an easing of tension coinciding with last month’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea.
Photo: AFP
“A meeting is being planned,” Trump posted on Twitter after speaking to Chung, setting up what would be his biggest foreign policy gamble since taking office in January last year.
Chung said Trump had agreed to meet by May in response to Kim’s invitation.
A senior US official later said that it could happen “in a matter of a couple of months, with the exact timing and place still to be determined.”
Russia and China, who joined years of on-again, off-again six-party talks, along with the US, the two Koreas and Japan, aimed at ending the standoff, welcomed the new, positive signals after months of deteriorating relations between North Korea and the US.
Trump had previously said he was willing to meet Kim under the right circumstances, but had indicated the time was not right.
He mocked US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in October last year for “wasting his time” trying to talk to North Korea.
Tillerson said on Thursday that although “talks about talks” might be possible with Pyongyang, denuclearization negotiations were likely a long way off.
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