Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un: North Korean officials say ‘difficult to understand’ why summit collapsed
A top North Korean official has revealed Kim Jong-un “may have lost his will” to continue dealings with the US, as others disputed Donald Trump’s claims about why talks broke down.
North Korea made a realistic proposal at a summit between its leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump but Washington insisted Pyongyang take one more step beyond dismantling its Yongbyon nuclear complex, North Korea’s foreign minister says.
Minister Ri Yong Ho told a news conference that Pyongyang had offered to permanently dismantle all its nuclear material production including plutonium and uranium observed by US experts.
Mr Ri added North Korea asked Washington to lift partial sanctions, not entirely, contradicting Mr Trump’s claim earlier.
North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui cast doubt on future dialogue following the failed summit, saying her country’s leader “may have lost his will (to continue) North Korea-US dealings.”
She said she believes Kim is finding it “difficult to understand” why the summit collapsed.
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Earlier, Trump said he had walked away from a nuclear deal at the Hanoi summit on Thursday because of unacceptable demands from the North Korean leader to lift US-led sanctions.
“It was not a good thing to be signing anything,” Trump said.
“It was a very interesting two days.
“Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times.”
The US President insisted “great progress” had been made in the past two days of high stakes talks in Hanoi and that he believed he still had a “very strong relationship” with Kim, although they are not at this stage planning another summit.
“It was about the sanctions,” Trump said of why talks broke down.
“Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn’t do that.”
Trump said Kim had offered to dismantle North Korea’s crucial Yongbyon nuclear reactor but that wasn’t enough to remove the sanctions imposed under the “maximum pressure” pose which is widely seen as having brought Kim to the negotiating table.
“They were willing to de nuke a large portion of the area that we want,” Trump said.
The Yongbyon nuclear reactor is considered a key component of North Korea’s weapons and nuclear capabilities.
Nuclear expert Dr Siegfried Hecker, who has inspected the facility, said its dismantlement would be the biggest step Kim could take because it would mean the rogue state could never again produce plutonium there.
“Yongbyon is the heart of North Korea’s nuclear program,” Hecker said ahead of the summit.
Trump said Kim assured him he’ll continue to hold off on nuclear and missile tests.
“I trust him and I hope that is true,” he said.
The US President said Jung Un “is quite a guy and quite a character” and they parted on friendly terms with a handshake.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the news conference in Hanoi that he wishes the two sides could have gotten further.
He said they asked Kim to do more and “he was unprepared to do that.”
Pompeo added the options “didn’t ultimately make sense for America.”
Trump and Pompeo flew out of Hanoi for Washington on board Air Force One soon after.
Earlier, the White House said talks would continue in the future after the “very good and constructive meetings in Hanoi”.
“The two leaders discussed various ways to advance denuclearisation and economic driven concepts,” a statement from the White House said.
“No agreement was reached at this time, but their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future.”
Ahead of their meeting, Trump appeared to play down expectations of short term success towards denuclearisation, saying he was in “no rush” and commending Kim for suspending weapons testing.
“I can’t speak necessarily for today, but I can say that this, a little bit longer term, and over a period of time, I know we’re going to have a fantastic success with respect to Chairman Kim and North Korea,” Trump said.
Earlier, the North Korean dictator responded to a question from a foreign reporter for the first time ever.
As they faced the press before the talks kicked off, a Washington Post reporter asked Kim if he felt confident.
Kim said: “It’s too early to say. I would not say I’m pessimistic”.
“For what I feel right now, I do have a feeling that good results will come out.”
His response is believed to be the first to a question from a foreign reporter.
Then just a little bit later, as if to prove it wasn’t a fluke, he did it again.
Looking confident and speaking in his typically gravelly voice, Kim didn’t miss a beat when asked by a member of the White House press pool about his outlook on the summit, saying “It’s too early to say. I won’t make predictions. But I instinctively feel that a good outcome will be produced.”
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South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which deals with North Korean affairs, couldn’t confirm whether it was the first time Kim answered a question from a foreign journalist.
But reporters didn’t get opportunities to ask questions of Kim during his three summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his four meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Kim ignored questions shouted at him during his first summit with Trump last June in Singapore.
In an earlier brush with foreign media at the opening of a war museum in Pyongyang in 2013, questions were shouted at him but not answered.
Before the talks kicked off, Mr Trump said he and Kim have a “special relationship” and he thinks over the years they’ll “be together a lot”
Ahead of their meeting, Trump appeared to play down expectations of short term success towards denuclearisation, saying he was in “no rush” and commending Kim for suspending weapons testing.
“I can’t speak necessarily for today, but I can say that this, a little bit longer term, and over a period of time, I know we’re going to have a fantastic success with respect to Chairman Kim and North Korea,” Trump said.
“They’re going to have an economic powerhouse. I’ve been writing about it, I’ve been talking about it.
“We don’t want the testing, and we’ve developed something very special with respect to that. But, I just want to say I have great respect for Chairman Kim, and I have great respect for his country, and I believe that it will be something economically that will be almost hard to compete with for many countries. It has such potential.”
Kim pledged he was committed to denuclearisation, telling reporters ahead of his working lunch with Trump: “If I’m not willing to do that, I won’t be here right now”.
After their one-on-one meeting, Trump and Kim were pictured walking inside the hotel with two translators, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a North Korean aide.
The talks took place against a background of immense domestic pressure for Trump, with front pages and cable TV in the US dominated by explosive allegations from his former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.
Cohen is to begin a three-year prison sentence for campaign finance violations and other crimes he says he committed at the behest of then-candidate Trump when he was campaigning ahead of the 2016 election.
But he’s not going down quietly, telling a Congressional committee overnight Trump had him lie, threaten people with knowledge of his history and to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the election.
Earlier, Mr Trump talked up North Korea’s “awesome” economic future if it ends its nuclear ambitions ahead of his high-stakes sit-down with Kim Jong-un.
Speaking through a translator, Kim praised Mr Trump’s “courageous decision” to begin negotiations.
COHEN’S EXPLOSIVE TESTIMONY
Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen turned on his former boss in a dramatic congressional appearance today, calling the US president a “conman”, “cheat” and “liar”.
In a damning testimony, Cohen said Trump ran his operation like a mafia family and behaved “much like a mobster would do”.
“He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders,” Cohen said.
“He speaks in a code, and I understand the code because I’ve been around him for a decade.
“I did things and I acted improperly. I blindly followed his demands.
“My loyalty has cost me everything. I will not sit back and allow him to do the same to the country.”
Among his jaw-dropping accusations, Cohen, 52, told the House Oversight Committee that Trump directed him to lie about hush payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her claims of an affair with Trump.
Cohen — who worked for Trump for 12 years — also claimed that personal lawyers for Trump and his family reviewed his written testimony to Congress in 2017, in which he lied about a Moscow real estate deal that was negotiated through the 2016 presidential race.
Cohen, who was vice-president in the Trump Organisation, was sentenced in December to three years in prison for the hush payments and lies to Congress — both of which he said were to protect Trump — as well as for tax evasion.
But in a marathon hearing Cohen offered no fresh evidence that Trump or members of his campaign colluded with Russia during the race, or evidence of financial crimes by the president and his Trump Organization — subjects at the centre of multiple federal and congressional investigations.
Originally published as Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un: North Korean officials say ‘difficult to understand’ why summit collapsed
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