President Trump's plan to meet Kim Jong Un shows control: W.H
The White House on Friday painted President Trump’s decision to sit down with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as a sign of control, not compromise.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the in-the-works meeting between the two leaders is validation of the administration’s hard-line approach to the rogue nation.
A mix of sanctions and Trump’s combative rhetoric have hammered Kim’s government into discussing “denuclearization,” Sanders said.
“Again this meeting won’t take place without concrete actions that match the promises that have been made by North Korea,” she added.
No U.S. President has ever met with a North Korean leader.
But critics are wary of the idea of a face-to-face, fearing it gives Kim exactly what he wants — legitimacy.
“To be clear — we need to talk to North Korea. But Kim is not inviting Trump so that he can surrender North Korea's weapons,” tweeted Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “Kim is inviting Trump to demonstrate that his investment in nuclear and missile capabilities has forced the United States to treat him as an equal.”
Asked if Trump believes Kim is sincere about scaling back the country’s nuclear and missile programs, Sanders said he is “hopeful.”
Trump is getting “exactly what he wants,” she said.
South Korean officials, briefing Trump at the White House on Thursday following a recent meeting with Kim in Pyongyang, told White House officials that the North Korean leader expressed a commitment to denuclearization.
Kim also pledged to halt nuclear and missile testing, but said his main interest was meeting Trump.
The meeting is a stark reversal from the war of words the two men exchanged as North Korea ramped up its missile tests during Trump’s first year in Washington, fueling fears of war.
Pyongyang repeatedly threatened to fire rockets at the U.S. territory of Guam and continues to condemn joint military exercises by the U.S and South Korea.
Administration officials pushed back against the idea that Trump has given in to the fancies of a small-time tyrant with a growing nuclear arsenal.
“Let’s be very clear. The United States has made zero concessions, but North Korea has made some promises,” Sanders said.
White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said Trump had discussed his decision with a “handful” of lawmakers, but wouldn’t reveal names. Short said the administration was cautious about the meeting, but Congress was responding with “excitement and encouragement.”
But aides described the decision as a personal, impulsive move made by the President alone, according to the Financial Times.
Sanders said if there was anyone was responsible for legitimizing North Korea it was the media, whom she mocked for coverage of Kim’s sister’s appearance at the recent Olympic games in South Korea.
“I think that is actually what put North Korea on a similar stage,” she said. “No action by this administration has even remotely demonstrated a level of rise that the media did during the Olympics and through some of those stories.”
The UN said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “encouraged” by the announcement of an upcoming U.S.-North Korea summit and “commends the leadership and vision of all concerned.”
Gutteres “reiterates his support for all efforts towards peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
With News Wire Services
