Tag Archives: Historic

Trump predicts report on origins of Russia probe will be ‘historic’

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump predicted on Friday that a government watchdog report on the origins of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which engulfed two years of his presidency, will be historic.

“The word is it’s historic,” Trump told Fox News Channel about an upcoming Justice Department watchdog report on the FBI’s adherence to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requirements during the 2016 campaign.

“That’s what I hear. If it’s historic, you’re going to see something,” Trump said, declining to say how he knew.

Trump supporters have claimed the report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, which is expected to be released on Dec. 9, will raise questions about the legitimacy of FBI investigations into alleged links to Russia by Trump and some of his campaign advisers.

A central issue the inspector general’s office said the report looked into is how closely the FBI stuck to the law and rules when it went to a secret court beginning in 2016 to obtain authorization to conduct electronic monitoring of “a certain U.S. person.”

Carter Page, a onetime foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, recently sued the Justice Department, accusing it of violating his privacy by failing to give him an opportunity to examine the report before publication.

(Reporting By Steve Holland and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Alex Richardson and Jonathan Oatis)

Korean leaders aim for end of war, ‘complete denuclearization’ after historic summit

By Christine Kim and Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) – The leaders of North and South Korea embraced on Friday after pledging to work for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”, on a day of smiles and handshakes at the first inter-Korean summit in more than a decade.

The two Koreas announced they would work with the United States and China this year to declare an official end to the 1950s Korean War and seek an agreement on “permanent” and “solid” peace.

The declaration included promises to pursue phased arms reduction, cease hostile acts, transform their fortified border into a peace zone and seek multilateral talks with other countries including the United States.

“The two leaders declare before our people of 80 million and the entire world there will be no more war on the Korean peninsula and a new age of peace has begun,” the two sides.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to visit the North Korean capital of Pyongyang this year, they said.

Earlier, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader since the 1950-53 Korean War to set foot in South Korea after shaking hands with his counterpart over a concrete curb marking the border in the heavily fortified demilitarized zone.

Scenes of Moon and Kim joking and walking together marked a striking contrast to last year’s barrage of North Korean missile tests and its largest ever nuclear test that led to sweeping international sanctions and fears of war.

Their meeting comes weeks before Kim is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in what would be the first ever meeting between sitting leaders of the two countries.

Trump welcomed the Korean talks.

“After a furious year of missile launches and Nuclear testing, a historic meeting between North and South Korea is now taking place. Good things are happening, but only time will tell!” he said on Twitter.

He later added: “KOREAN WAR TO END! The United States, and all of its GREAT people, should be very proud of what is now taking place in Korea!”

China, North Korea’s main ally, welcomed the leaders’ statement and said it was willing to keep playing a proactive role in promoting political solutions. China is wary of being sidelined by a thaw between the two Koreas and by the upcoming summit between Trump and Kim.

Russia said it was ready to facilitate cooperation between North and South Korea, including in the fields of railway transport and energy.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also welcomed the summit and said he expected North Korea to take concrete steps to carry out its promises.

Global markets were lifted by hopes the summit would pave the way for the end of conflict on the Korean peninsula. Shares in Seoul briefly rose more than 1 percent to a one-month high and Japan’s Nikkei share average also gained.

‘BALL IN U.S. COURT’

As part of efforts to reduce tension, the two sides agreed to open a liaison office, stop propaganda broadcasts and leaflet drops along the border and allow Korean families divided by the border to meet.

Days before the summit, Kim said North Korea would suspend nuclear and long-range missile tests and dismantle its only known nuclear test site.

But there has been widespread scepticism about whether Kim is ready to abandon the nuclear arsenal his country has developed for decades, justifying it as a necessary deterrent against U.S. invasion.

“Everything will not be resolved in the blink of an eye,” said Kim Young-hee, a North Korean defector-turned-economist at the Korea Development Bank.

“Kim Jong Un has put the ball in the U.S. court. He declared denuclearization, and promised to halt nuclear tests,” she said. “That tells us he wants the United States to guarantee the safety of his regime … in return for denuclearization.”

It is not the first time leaders of North and South Korea have declared hopes for peace. Two earlier summits, in Pyongyang in 2000 and 2007, failed to halt the North’s weapons program or improve relations in a lasting way.

“We will make efforts to create good results by communicating closely, in order to make sure our agreement signed today before the entire world, will not end as just a beginning like previous agreements before today,” Kim said after the agreement was signed.

FIRST ACROSS THE LINE

Earlier, Moon greeted Kim at the military demarcation line where the men smiled and shook hands.

In an unplanned move, Kim invited Moon to step briefly across into North Korea, before the two leaders crossed back into South Korea holding hands.

“I was excited to meet at this historic place and it is really moving that you came all the way to the demarcation line to greet me in person,” Kim said, wearing his customary black Mao suit.

“A new history starts now. An age of peace, from the starting point of history,” Kim wrote in Korean in a guest book in the South’s Peace House before talks began.

During a private meeting in the morning, Kim told Moon he came to the summit to end the history of conflict and joked he was sorry for waking Moon up with his early morning missile tests, a senior presidential official said.

Moon and Kim released their joint declaration before a dinner banquet.

Later, with their wives, they watched a music performance and held hands as they watched a montage of photos from their summit set to a K-pop song that included the words “be a family again”.

After warm farewells, Kim was driven back to North Korea.

The United States said earlier it was hopeful talks on peace and prosperity would make progress and it looked forward to discussions with South Korea in preparation for the planned meeting of Trump and Kim in coming weeks.

Just months ago, Trump and Kim were trading threats and insults as the North made rapid advances in pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting the United States.

The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The war pitted the South, U.N. and U.S. forces against the communist North, backed by China and Russia.

Kim and Trump are expected to meet in late May or June. Trump said on Thursday he was considering several dates and venues.

(Reporting by the Inter-Korean Summit Press Corps, Christine Kim and Josh Smith; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin in SEOUL and David Brunnstrom and Susan Heavey and Eric Beech in WASHINGTON; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel)

In U.S. presidential first, Trump prays at Jerusalem’s Western Wall

U.S. President Donald Trump places a note in the stones of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City

By Luke Baker and Steve Holland

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – President Donald Trump made a historic visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Monday, standing before the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray and saying a few words before inserting a note between the monumental stones.

He was accompanied by the Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, who said on Israel Radio that he recited two psalms with the U.S. leader. One of them, Psalm 122, speaks of Jerusalem as a “city that is united together”.

The ancient stones are in a part of Jerusalem that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It considers all of Jerusalem its indivisible capital, a status that is not recognized internationally.

“(Trump) said that he understands the significance of the Western Wall for the Jewish people and that’s why he decided to visit here during his first trip to Israel. He is certain he will come here again, perhaps many times. He was very moved,” Rabinowitz said.

“He asked about the size of the Western Wall. We presented the maps, what was in the past, what’s happening now, the excavations, the finds.”

The president was joined on the visit by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who went to the wall shortly after Trump and said prayers. Both he and Trump wore black kippahs, the skull caps worn by religious Jews and by others as a mark of respect.

After a few moments standing silently before the limestone edifice, his right hand resting on the blocks, Trump withdrew and smiled briefly. He did not walk backwards from the wall as religious Jews do as a sign of devotion.

It is the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited and prayed at the site. Barack Obama visited in 2008, but it was during the campaign, before he became president.

The Wall, the visible portion of which stands more than 60 feet (20 meters) high, was a retaining structure for the second Jewish temple, which stood on an esplanade in the Old City before being destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

The site is known to Jews as Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism, and to Muslims as The Noble Sanctuary, where al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, and the gold-topped Dome of the Rock, now stand.

Access to much of the walled Old City, which is divided into four ‘quarters’ — Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish — was shut down on Monday ahead of Trump’s visit. The area has been the scene of multiple stabbing attacks by Palestinians targeting Jews over the past couple of years.

As Trump and Kushner visited the area of the wall set aside for men, Melania Trump and Ivanka, Kushner’s wife, visited a separate nearby section where women are allowed to pray.

Like her husband, Melania held her right hand up against the towering stones and inserted a note among the cracks, something Jews often do as a means of submitting prayers.

Ivanka, who converted to Judaism on marrying her husband, was dressed demurely in black and wore her hair partially covered by a small hat. Video footage showed her crying as she prayed at the wall.

Trump’s visit to the site sparked some controversy during the planning.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had sought to accompany Trump to the Western Wall. But the State Department said that would not be permitted as officially the Wall is in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied 50 years ago, and Palestinians seek as the capital of a future state.

(Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Jeffrey Heller, Greg Mahlich)