Hanoi: US President Donald Trump said he was in ‘no rush’ to secure a deal over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme as he kicked off formal talks Thursday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The two men who once traded personal insults and threats of destruction are holding their second meeting in eight months, with analysts warning it needs to produce more concrete progress than their initial historic get-together in Singapore.
The Singapore summit resulted in cozy images, but only a vague commitment from Kim to ‘work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula’. Diplomacy has since stalled amid disagreements on what that actually means.
But as the two leaders sat down for Thursday’s formal discussions in Hanoi, Trump said success would come over a ‘longer period of time’.
For his part, Kim said there were ‘people who hold a sceptical view of our meeting’ but he pledged to seek ‘great, ultimately good results’.
“I think watching us have a great time will be like watching a scene from a fantasy movie,” said the North Korean leader.
Trump described Kim as a ‘great leader’ Wednesday and said North Korea had ‘tremendous economic potential, unbelievable, unlimited’ as he vowed to help the country achieve those goals.
They had a ‘candid and honest dialogue’ during their one-on-one meeting Wednesday, North Korea’s state news agency KCNA said Thursday. And over dinner, it added, ‘sincere and deep opinions were exchanged with a view to making comprehensive and epoch-making results’.
But scandal back home in Washington threatens to distract Trump with his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen calling him a ‘racist’ and a ‘conman’ during a congressional hearing.
Kim on the other hand, is looking for relief from biting sanctions for his deeply impoverished country, as well as security guarantees for him and his regime.
AFP
