Trump-Kim summit: US president blames failure of talks on North Korea's demand for sanctions to be dropped
Follow the latest updates on the historic meeting
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have cut short their talks in Hanoi, Vietnam and skipped a scheduled lunch event.
The White House confirmed the summit had ended with “no agreement reached” as the leaders headed back to their respective hotels.
The US president talks broke down over North Korea’s demands on US-led sanctions.
“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that,” he told reporters. “Sometimes you have to walk.”
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said negotiations would continue at a future date.
Several Democrats came out acknowledging Mr Trump’s decision to walk away without a deal was the right move in this situation. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff said walking away with no deal was better than agreeing to a bad deal, before adding that it was “the result of a poorly planned strategy.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed similar statements, citing his concerns about the likelihood of a bad deal forming out of the summit.
“A deal that fell short of complete denuclearization would have only made North Korea stronger & the world less safe,” Mr Schumer said.
After the summit, Mr Trump also defended Mr Kim over the tragic death of American college student Otto Warmbier, who was jailed in North Korea in December 2015 for attempting to steal propaganda material during an organised tour.The president said he does not believe the autocratic leader was aware of Mr Warmbier’s condition in the North Korean hard labour prison camp.
"He tells me he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word,” Mr Trump said.
After two years of imprisonment, North Korean authorities returned Mr Warbier to the US in a coma in July 2017. A few days later, the 22-year-old died in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman criticised the American president’s defense of Mr Kim.
“I’m very concerned that the President didn’t seem to be all that concerned about the murder of Otto Warmbier from Cincinnati,” Mr Brown told reporters on Thursday. “I don’t know how he says he likes the dictator of NK so much.”
Mr Portman insists that Mr Trump and the American people must remember Mr Warmbier and that “we should never let North Korea off the hook for what they did to him."
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In Hanoi, soldiers, police and international journalists thronged the streets outside his hotel and hundreds of eager citizens stood behind barricades hoping to see the North Korean leader. As flags from the three countries fluttered in a chilly drizzle, dozens of cameras flashed and some citizens screamed and used their mobile phones to capture Kim’s rock-star-like arrival.
“I like him,” local resident Van Dang Luu, who works at a nearby bank, said of Kim. “He is very young and he is very interesting. And he is very powerful,” she said. “Trump is not young, but I think he is very powerful.”
Kim ventured out of his locked-down hotel and spent Tuesday traveling around the Vietnamese capital in his armored limousine. With a squad of bodyguards in tow, he visited sections of Hanoi, including his nation’s embassy where a loud cheer went up as he entered the compound.
AP
Colin Alexander has published a piece in The Independent on what to be watching for — and expecting — when Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un meet face to face for their second summit. Read below:
First of all, the Kim family will want assurances that they will not be next in the firing line of the sort of regime change tactics the US has been engaging in with Venezuela.
Secondly, Kim’s governance of North Korea continues to rely on him being able to restrict goods, migration, and information. The development of the country’s nuclear capacity has primarily been motivated to ward off imperialist invaders and preserve the isolated “purity” of North Korea’s existence. The North Koreans want that to stay the way it is — and they won’t commit to denuclearisation if those conditions aren’t met.
As for the US, their aims are much the same as they have been since the Korean peninsula split into North and South Korea after the Second World War. They want to gain access to new markets for US investments, products and services, and to be able to explore and ultimately exploit the natural resources found within the North Korean territory.
Just before Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are set to meet to discuss the potential denuclearisation of North Korea, Amnesty International has released a statement warning of overlooking the regime’s human rights atrocities throughout the region.
“Over a year ago, President Trump stood in front of Congress and pledged to challenge North Korea’s human rights record. Since then, President Trump has repeatedly disregarded the human rights of the North Korean people to gain favour with Kim Jung-un. His silence in the face of relentless and grave human rights violations has been deafening,” Francisco Bencosme, advocacy manager for Asia Pacific at Amnesty International USA, said in the statement.
He added, “The people of North Korea have endured enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, forced labour in prison camps, a total absence of press freedom, severe restrictions on freedom of expression and movement, and decades of separation of families. But President Trump has turned his back on them for the sake of a photo-op.”
A real question remains over whether North Korea will truly abandon its nuclear efforts, as the regime has spent decades — at an enormous financial sacrifice — to build its military and nuclear programmes.
“We want denuclearization, and I think he’ll have a country that will set a lot of records for speed in terms of an economy,” Donald Trump has said.
While Kim Jong Un is seeking for the US to end its sanctions against the country, the US will reportedly work to get an agreement towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister held a crystal ashtray for him while he smoked during his journey to the Vietnam summit with Donald Trump.
The dictator was filmed pacing around a railway station in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, while Kim Yo-jong followed him holding the ashtray in two hands.
Mr Kim was making a brief stop at the station during his 65-hour, 2,500-mile journey from the North Korean capital Pyongyang aboard a bulletproof train.
Donald Trump may not have outlined yet exactly what he hopes to accomplish during his second meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but you can bet he’s going to tweet it was a success, as former Senior State Department official Thomas Countryman told Brooke Baldwin today on CNN:
Experts are worried Donald Trump may defy discussions between US and North Korean negotiators in an attempt to achieve a public victory during his second summit with regime leader Kim Jong Un.
There are reportedly four main goals that emerged during the first summit:
- New, less-tense relations between the US and North Korea
- Lasting peace along the Korean Peninsula
- The complete denuclearization of the Peninsula
- The recovery of US POW/MIA remains left in the region during the Korean War.
It remains unclear what goals may be put forth when the leaders meet on Wednesday in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Donald Trump has admitted he will go into a second summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un later this week with expectations substantially reduced from when they first met in Singapore last year.
The US would be “happy” with the outcome of the talks in Vietnam “as long as there’s no testing”, Mr Trump said, a reference to the continuation of a pause on nuclear and missile tests that has been in place in North Korea since late 2017.
After his first summit with Mr Kim in June last year, the US president tweeted there was “no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea – a claim the secretary of state Mike Pompeo has now admitted was untrue.
NBC News’ Peter Alexander has detailed exactly what happened the moment the White House press corps was reportedly evicted from a Hanoi hotel in order to make way for North Korean regime leader Kim Jong Un, posting his “reporter’s notebook” notes on Twitter:
Despite the list of goals set out during the first historic summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, it does not appear much has been fully accomplished by their second meeting on Wednesday besides some remains being returned to the US from the Korean War.
“I’m not in a rush. I don’t want to rush anybody, I just don’t want testing. As long as there’s no testing, we’re happy,” Donald Trump said on Sunday about his negotiations with North Korea.
Meanwhile, negotiators reportedly have not established exact guidelines surrounding the denuclearisation of the peninsula.
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