Trump-Kim summit down to the nitty-gritty of ground rules

Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un yesterday tried to set the groundwork for a high-stakes summit.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Picture: Reuters

Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un yesterday tried to set the groundwork for a high-stakes summit that could ­reshape the security environment in Asia, amid questions about whether the talks will be more substance or symbolism.

North Korean state media ­reported that Kim outlined goals for today’s face-to-face meeting — the first between a sitting US ­President and a North Korean leader — including establishing new relations between the countries and building a permanent peacekeeping mechanism, as well as denuclearisation.

The US President, who has used sweeping economic sanctions to press North Korea to abandon its atomic arsenal, has lately played down the likelihood of a rapid solution to the standoff.

Mr Trump said he expected it “will take a period of time” to achieve a deal.

“At a minimum, I do believe, at least we’ll have met each other,” he said.

“Hopefully we will have liked each other, and we’ll start that ­process.”

Kim is scheduled to leave Singapore at 2pm (4pm AEST), just five hours after his summit with Mr Trump is set to begin, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr Trump is set to leave ­tomorrow morning, this person added.

A senior US official cautioned against hopes for a breakthrough in Singapore such as a formal end to the Korean War of 1950-53, which ended in an armistice.

“A peace treaty comes way down the road,” the official said.

Mr Trump’s framing of the summit as a “get-to-know-you” meeting marks a comedown in ­expectations from late April when he batted away the notion that he would accept anything less than the US’s long-stated goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation.

For North Korea, the aim has been clear and consistent, said Thae Yong-ho, Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to London until he defected to South Korea two years ago.

In a memoir published last month, Mr Thae wrote that Pyongyang’s goal has long been to be recognised as a de facto nuclear state, like India and Pakistan.

At a meeting of North Korea’s diplomats in Pyongyang in 2016, senior North Korean officials agreed to complete the country’s nuclear program by last year, ­followed by a diplomatic detente beginning this year.

“The 2018 peace initiative by Kim Jong-un is to present the world with a fait accompli,” Mr Thae wrote, adding Pyongyang’s leadership feared that inter­national sanctions would result in “considerable damage” if left in place.

In late April, a week before his first meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the inter-Korean demilitarised zone, Kim convened an emergency meeting of the central committee of North Korea’s ruling party, ­declaring the completion of the North’s nuclear program and vowing to work together with other nuclear states to “make positive contributions to the building of the world free from nuclear weapons”.

It remains unclear how much progress has been made towards narrowing the gap between Pyongyang, which prefers a phased approach to disarmament in exchange for concessions from the US and others, and Wash­ington, which wants a rapid surrender of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.

Even if the summit fails to produce a denuclearisation deal or a more modest declaration of amity and goodwill, it will have raised the international profile of Kim, for years an international pariah.

In recent months, Kim has embarked on a flurry of diplomacy, meeting Mr Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping twice each.

He has meetings planned with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and on Sunday night met ­Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the presidential ­office.

“It’s hard to see how a small nat­ion like North Korea could ever garner this kind of inter­national attention had it not been for their nuclear threat,” said Lindsey Ford, a former senior adviser to the US assistant secretary of defence for Asian and Pacific security affairs.

Ms Ford, now director of political security affairs for the Asia ­Society Policy Institute in Washington, said: “We have to assume other nations could watch what’s happening here and draw the conclusion that behaving badly seems to pay off a whole lot more than playing nice.”

The Wall Street Journal