Hanoi: North Korea is disputing President Donald Trump’s account of why the summit between him and Kim Jong Un collapsed, insisting that the North demanded only partial sanctions relief in exchange for shutting down its main nuclear complex.
Trump, who was on his way back Thursday to Washington, said before leaving here that the talks broke down because North Korea’s leader insisted that all the punishing sanctions the US has imposed on Pyongyang be lifted without the North committing to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.
The President made no mention of the disagreement as he addressed US troops during a stopover at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska.
Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho commented on the talks during an abruptly scheduled middle-of-the-night news conference.
Ri said the North was also ready to offer in writing a permanent halt of the country’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests and that Washington wasted an opportunity that ‘may not come again’. He said the North’s position wouldn’t change even if the United States offers to resume another round of dialogue.
Trump had said here Hanoi that there had been a proposed agreement ‘ready to be signed’. However, he said after the summit was cut short, “Sometimes you have to walk.”
Mere hours after both nations had seemed hopeful of a deal, the two leaders’ motorcades roared away from the downtown area summit site within minutes of each other, their lunch cancelled and a signing ceremony scuttled.
The US President’s closing news conference was hurriedly moved up, and he departed for Washington more than two hours ahead of schedule.
The breakdown denied Trump a much-needed triumph amid growing domestic turmoil back home, including congressional testimony this week by his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who called Trump a ‘racist’ and ‘con man’ and claimed prior knowledge that WikiLeaks would release emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
Trump insisted his relations with Kim remained warm, but he did not commit to having a third summit with the North Korean leader, saying a possible next meeting ‘may not be for a long time’.
“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that,” Trump told reporters.
There was disappointment and alarm in South Korea, whose liberal leader has been a leading orchestrator of the nuclear diplomacy and who needs a breakthrough to restart lucrative engagement projects with the impoverished North.
‘Yonhap’ news agency said that the clock on the Korean Peninsula’s security situation has ‘turned back to zero’ and diplomacy is now ‘at a crossroads’.
AP