Tag Archives: Summit

Trump to talk to Russia’s Putin about substantially reducing nuclear weapons

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a joint news conference at Chequers, the official country residence of the Prime Minister, near Aylesbury, Britain, July 13, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

CHEQUERS, England (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he would discuss substantial reductions to nuclear weapons when he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday.

“The proliferation is a tremendous, I mean to me, it’s the biggest problem in the world, nuclear weapons, biggest problem in the world,” Trump said alongside British Prime Minister Theresa May at her Chequers country residence.

“If we can do something to substantially reduce them, I mean, ideally get rid of them, maybe that’s a dream, but certainly it’s a subject that I’ll be bringing up with him,” Trump said of his upcoming meeting with Putin.

Trump added: “It’s also a very expensive thing but that’s the least important.”

The United States and Russia are by far the world’s biggest nuclear powers.

Trump cautioned that it was hard to do substantive deals with Russia because his opponents would say that he was too pro-Russian.

“We have this stupidity going on, pure stupidity, but it makes it very hard to do something with Russia because, anything you do, it’s like: ‘Russia, oh he loves Russia’,” Trump said. “I love the United States but I love getting along with Russia and China and other countries.”

Though Trump has not so far given specific details about what nuclear arms control treaties they would like to talk about, he and Putin are likely to discuss the possibility of extending the “New Start” treaty – a pillar of arms control.

They are also likely to discuss what to do about another pact known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to try to dampen a high-risk nuclear rivalry between the two former Cold War foes.

Ahead of the summit, Russian diplomats have stressed the need for strategic stability talks, saying existing arms control treaties are fraying at the edges and they fear Washington will withdraw from the INF treaty. Both sides accuse one another of violating the treaty.

New Start, signed in 2010, requires both nations to cut their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades.

The treaty, which also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers, expires in February 2021, but can be extended by five years if both sides agree.

A U.S. official said Trump would be ready to talk about New Start if Putin raised it, but it was not a big U.S. priority.

The INF Treaty, signed in 1987, required both sides to eliminate their ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km (310 and 3,420 miles).

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, additional reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Peter Graff)

For Putin, Helsinki talks with Trump a win before he even sits down

FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo/File Photo

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – For U.S. President Donald Trump, a summit with Vladimir Putin risks a political backlash at home and abroad. For the Russian president, however, the fact the summit is even happening is already a big geopolitical win.

Despite Russia’s semi-pariah status among some Americans and U.S. allies, the Kremlin has long been trying to arrange a summit, betting that Putin and Trump will get on well and stop a sharp downwards spiral in bilateral ties.

While nobody on either side expects big breakthroughs, including on U.S. sanctions, the summit is seen by Moscow as U.S. recognition of Russia’s status as a great power and an overdue U.S. realization that its interests must be taken into account.

“The fact that a Putin-Trump meeting will happen says only one thing: that for all its hysteria, the United States is not able to isolate or ignore Russia,” said Alexei Pushkov, a prominent Russian senator from the ruling United Russia party.

“It took a long time for Washington to get that idea, but it got there in the end.”

Western grievances over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its backing of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and its support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad haven’t gone away.

Other accusations, denied by Moscow, include that it meddled in U.S. and European politics, supplied the weapon that shot down a passenger plane in 2014 over Ukraine and tried to kill a former Russian spy in Britain with a nerve agent.

Kremlin critics at home and abroad see Trump’s decision to grant Putin a summit against that backdrop as conferring international legitimacy and status on Putin, something they say he doesn’t deserve given the lack of meaningful change in Russia’s policies internationally.

But in Russia, where the political system is obsessed with hierarchy, status and displays of raw power, Putin has “already got his victory,” said Andrey Kortunov, head of RIAC, a foreign policy think-tank close to the Foreign Ministry.

“It allows him to make his point that Russia is not isolated, that Russia is a great power, and to some extent can even claim an equal status with the United States, at least in the security field,” said Kortunov.

Expectations are high in Russia that Putin, with more than 18 years of global experience, will have the edge on Trump, who had not held elected office before he was inaugurated last year. The two men have met twice before at other events and spoken by phone at least eight times.

Vitaly Tretyakov, a political author, described Trump on state TV on the day the summit was agreed as “a neophyte in world politics” to whom Putin could explain Russian thinking and why Russia was right to annex Crimea.

Sergei Mironov, a senior lawmaker from the pro-Kremlin Just Russia party, said in another political talk show that Putin would definitely have the upper hand in Helsinki.

“… Vladimir Putin will give a real master class to the inexperienced politician Donald Trump,” he said.

START OF A THAW?

For older Russians, the summit venue – Helsinki – reinforces Putin’s narrative by evoking memories of Cold War show-downs between the Soviet Union and the United States at a time when Moscow was the capital of a real superpower.

While ties with China, India and the European Union may be even more important in economic terms, Russian politicians still measure their own country’s soft and hard power globally against that of the United States.

Nobody in Russia expects the summit to resolve the differences that have led to painful U.S. sanctions. A survey by state pollster VTsIOM published on Monday showed that more than half of 1,600 Russian adults polled predicted the summit would yield no tangible results.

But for Russian politicians who erupted in applause on learning that Trump won the U.S. election in hopes of rapprochement only to see ties worsen, Helsinki offers a precious opportunity for a possible thaw in relations.

Hard-liners saw a rare visit to Moscow this month of a delegation of Republican lawmakers as proof the tide is turning.

“Six months ago we suggested to them (the lawmakers) that we communicate by Skype. For them, it was political suicide, but now it’s not,” pro-Putin lawmaker Vyacheslav Nikonov, the grandson of Stalin’s foreign minister, told state TV this month.

Nikonov said Trump was now strong enough to pursue his own agenda.

“It’s one of the signs that the wind is blowing in our sails, thanks in large part to Trump,” he said. “I don’t remember any pro-Russian (U.S.) presidents, but I want to remind you that he (Trump) is one of the most pro-Russian politicians at the moment in the United States.”

Kremlin-backed media have stressed the importance of the summit taking place on neutral territory to ensure Trump is not seen as having the upper hand.

Dmitry Kiselyov, presenter of Russia’s main weekly TV news show “Vesti Nedeli,” said Moscow had seen how Trump had received other leaders on home soil, showing footage of Trump holding Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s hand in a vice-like grip, brushing dandruff off French President Emmanuel Macron’s shoulder and glowering next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“On neutral territory everyone will be calmer,” Kiselyov, who is close to the Kremlin, said in a report on the subject.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

South Korea scraps annual government war drill as talks with North go on

FILE PHOTO - South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meet in the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, April 27, 2018. Korea Summit Press Pool/Pool via Reuters

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea said on Tuesday it has decided to scrap an annual government mobilization drill this year as part of a suspended joint exercise with the United States but will carry out its own drills to maintain readiness. The ministers of safety and defense made the announcement at a media briefing on Tuesday. The drill, called the Ulchi exercises, usually takes place every August in tandem with the joint Freedom Guardian military drill with the United States.

Seoul and Washington said in June they would halt the joint exercise after U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to end war games following his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12.

Seoul’s presidential office has said the suspension of the combined exercise could facilitate ongoing nuclear talks between North Korea and the United States.

South Korea would develop a new drill model by incorporating Ulchi and the existing Taeguk command post exercises, which would be aimed at fighting militancy and large-scale natural disasters, the ministers said.

That incorporated exercise would be launched in October when the Hoguk field training drill takes place, the ministers said.

“Our military will carry out planned standalone drills this year and decide on joint exercises through close consultations with the United States,” Defence Minister Song Young-moo said.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin, Christine Kim; Editing by Paul Tait)

Trump will focus on Russia’s ‘malign’ activity at summits: U.S. officials

FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin talks to U.S. President Donald Trump during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria//File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will discuss Russia’s “malign activity” during a summit with NATO leaders and follow up in a meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin to determine whether Moscow wants to reduce tensions, U.S. official said on Thursday.

“The president believes a better relationship with Russia would be good for both America and Russia, but the ball really is in Russia’s court and the president will continue to hold Russia accountable for its malign activity,” Jon Huntsman, U.S. ambassador to Russia, told reporters on a conference call.

“We’re entering with our eyes wide open, but peace is always worth the effort,” Huntsman said.

Trump is slated to meet Putin in Helsinki on July 16. He will meet with NATO leaders the week before in Brussels.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Doina Chiacu and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by David Gregorio)

Explainer: What will it cost for complete denuclearization of North Korea?

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore in this picture released on June 12, 2018 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency. KCNA via REUTERS/File Phot

VIENNA (Reuters) – At a summit in Singapore in early June with U.S. President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un pledged to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”.

Follow-up talks between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean officials are due to be held, and Trump said last week, “It will be a total denuclearization, which has already started taking place.”

Assuming denuclearization of North Korea does take place, what would it look like and how much would it cost?

WHAT DOES DENUCLEARIZATION MEAN?

That is far from clear and may have different meanings for each side.

The exact form denuclearization takes will depend on negotiations. North Korea may seek to continue some nuclear activities with possible civilian uses like uranium enrichment, as Iran is able to do under its deal with major powers.

For Washington, however, denuclearization means at least eliminating the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons. That requires removing or dismantling existing weapons, shutting down the program that makes them, and limiting or eliminating Pyongyang’s ability to enrich uranium and produce plutonium, another key ingredient in atomic bombs.

It would also most likely require restricting or eliminating North Korea’s ballistic missile programs.

KNOWN AND UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS

To complicate matters further, much remains unknown about North Korea’s nuclear activities, its weapons program and its ballistic missile capabilities. These are among the most secret activities in a highly secretive state that foreign intelligence services have struggled to penetrate.

North Korea has carried out six increasingly powerful nuclear tests since 2006 and surprised foreign governments with a series of missile tests showing rapidly improving technology and increasing range.

Pyongyang tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in December that governments and experts said appeared to bring all of the continental United States within range, though many believe it has yet to fully develop the re-entry vehicle in which the warhead returns to the Earth’s atmosphere as it approaches its target.

BEATING HEART

Historically the Yongbyon complex north of Pyongyang has been at the heart of North Korea’s nuclear program. It houses a reactor that produces spent fuel from which plutonium is reprocessed, and an experimental reactor that analysts observing satellite imagery say is close to being completed.

Yongbyon is also widely thought to house a uranium enrichment plant, though many experts say one or more larger enrichment sites are likely to exist outside Yongbyon.

By pursuing plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, North Korea has developed the two tracks to obtaining the fissile material for nuclear weapons.

While Yongbyon is closely watched by satellites and was monitored by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors before they were expelled in 2009, far less is known about facilities elsewhere in the country.

Nuclear analyst David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security has quoted an anonymous “official source” as saying that about half of North Korea’s nuclear facilities are outside Yongbyon and the site where it has carried out nuclear tests.

FEW PRECEDENTS

There are few cases in which a country has voluntarily given up nuclear weapons. Those that have did so in particular circumstances, and provide imperfect analogies.

South Africa shut down its nuclear weapons program and dismantled its weapons shortly before the 1994 end of apartheid. Several former Soviet republics gave up their weapons after the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. Of those, Ukraine had the most, roughly 5,000, and it held onto them the longest.

South Africa kept its nuclear weapons program secret until after it had dismantled its six atom bombs and destroyed many of the documents relating to them, meaning the cost is not known. The weapons were dismantled in just months.

In Ukraine, which had ground-based strategic weapons with roughly 1,250 nuclear warheads, a Defence Ministry official said the United States paid around $350 million to dismantle the silos from which those missiles would have been launched.

At its peak Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal was the third biggest in the world. North Korea’s is much smaller – its exact size is not known but several analysts estimate it has around 30 weapons.

SO, HOW MUCH?

Given the uncertainties involved, most analysts are reluctant to be more specific than to predict costs for denuclearization running into billions of dollars.

“I think it would be fair to say that dismantling and cleanup of a substantial part of the North Korean nuclear complex (not even considering the missile complex) would cost many billions and take 10 years or so,” said Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear scientist and Stanford University professor who visited Yongbyon in 2010.

The U.S. Congressional Budget Office in 2008 estimated at $575 million the cost of dismantling the reactor at Yongbyon and two nearby plants that made fuel rods and separated plutonium from spent fuel, plus shipping its spent fuel out of the country and reprocessing it. It said that should take four years.

North Korea’s nuclear activities and stockpiles have increased significantly since 2008. There is now a second reactor at least near completion at Yongbyon, and the CBO estimate did not cover uranium enrichment, weapons facilities, missile technology or sites like uranium mines.

VERIFICATION

For the whole process to work, Washington will need to be convinced North Korea has declared all its relevant sites and activities. Verification is likely to play an important role.

Any doubt over whether North Korea has declared all its activities could lead to a dispute like the one over whether Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion of that country in 2003. A balance will have to be struck between transparency and intrusiveness.

The cost of IAEA safeguards activities for Iran, where the agency is policing the country’s 2015 nuclear deal, was 15.8 million euros ($18.42 million) last year, according to a confidential IAEA report obtained by Reuters.

But the IAEA was already inspecting Iran’s declared nuclear facilities before the deal was reached. Starting essentially from scratch in North Korea will be much more expensive.

“If you take the annual cost of IAEA verification and monitoring in Iran and multiply it by roughly three or more, you might get a rough estimate for the annual cost for North Korea after any denuclearization deal,” Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said.

“North Korea’s nuclear program is more secretive than Iran’s and, in terms of nuclear weapons, far more advanced.”

(Reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Ed Cropley in Johannesburg, Joyce Lee, Joori Roh and Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Writing by Francois Murphy; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Trump-Putin summit to unfold in Cold War venue Helsinki on July 16

The Market Square and the Presidential palace pictured in Helsinki, Finland on June 28, 2018. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are to meet in Helsinki, the capital of Finland on July 16, 2018. LEHTIKUVA / Onni Ojala/via REUTERS

By Doina Chiacu and Andrew Osborn

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold their first summit on July 16 in Helsinki, a renowned venue for Cold War diplomacy, with nervous U.S. allies in Europe and Russia skeptics looking on.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva/File Photo

The Kremlin and the White House simultaneously announced the place and date of the summit a day after striking a deal on holding the meeting following a visit to Moscow on Wednesday by U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.”The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues,” the White House said in a statement similar to one released by the Kremlin.

Trump will meet Putin after attending a July 11-12 summit of NATO leaders and making a visit to Britain. The summit’s date will give Putin a chance to attend the July 15 closing ceremony of the soccer World Cup which his country is hosting.

The two leaders have met twice before on the sidelines of international gatherings and spoken at least eight times by phone. They have also made positive comments about each other from time to time with Putin praising Trump’s handling of the economy.

Their summit could irritate U.S. allies however who want to isolate Putin, such as Britain, or countries like Ukraine who are nervous about what they see as Trump’s overly friendly attitude toward the Russian leader.

It is also likely to go down badly among critics who question Trump’s commitment to the NATO alliance and who have been concerned about his frictions with longtime allies such as Canada and Germany over trade.

LOW EXPECTATIONS

Trump has long expressed a desire for better relations with Moscow, even as Washington tightens sanctions, and the Kremlin has long pushed for a summit.

It made no secret on Wednesday of its delight that such a meeting had finally been agreed with Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov saying the two men were likely to talk for several hours. He spoke of a possible joint declaration on improving U.S.-Russia relations and international security.

Trump congratulated Putin by phone in March after the Russian leader’s landslide re-election victory.

But since then, already poor ties between Washington and Moscow have deteriorated over the conflict in Syria and the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain which sparked big diplomatic expulsions in both countries.

Expectations for a summit are therefore low.

A special counsel in the United States has indicted Russian firms and individuals as part of a probe into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump denies wrongdoing and calls the investigation a “witch hunt.”

The U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow sought to interfere in that campaign to tilt the election in Trump’s favor has also been hanging over relations with Russia since Trump took office in January last year.

Bolton told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday he expected Russian interference in U.S. politics to be discussed at the summit and said he did not rule out Trump discussing Russia rejoining the Group of Seven industrialized countries to make it the G8 again.

After Trump and Putin met briefly in Vietnam in November 2017, Trump was criticized in the United States for saying he believed Putin when the Russian president denied accusations that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

In a Twitter post on Thursday before the Helsinki meeting was announced, Trump again appeared to cast doubt on Russian involvement. “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” he wrote.

In Washington on Wednesday, Trump listed Syria and Ukraine as being among the many subjects he would discuss with Putin.

(Additonal reporting by Denis Pinchuk in Moscow, Editing by Toby Chopra and Frances Kerry, William Maclean)

Trump says North Korea no longer a nuclear threat; North highlights concessions

North Koreans watch the displayed local newspapers reporting the summit between the U.S. and North Korea at a subway station in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo taken by Kyodo June 13, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat, nor is it the “biggest and most dangerous problem” for the United States, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday on his return from a summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The summit was the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader and followed a flurry of North Korean nuclear and missile tests and angry exchanges between Trump and Kim last year that fueled fears of war.

“Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump said on Twitter.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walk in the Capella Hotel after their working lunch, on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. Susan Walsh/Pool via Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walk in the Capella Hotel after their working lunch, on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. Susan Walsh/Pool via Reuters

“There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

On Tuesday, Trump told a news conference after the summit that he would like to lift sanctions against the North but that this would not happen immediately.

North Korean state media lauded the summit as a resounding success, saying Trump expressed his intention to halt U.S.-South Korea military exercises, offer security guarantees to the North and lift sanctions against it as relations improve.

Kim and Trump invited each other to their respective countries and both leaders “gladly accepted,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

“Kim Jong Un and Trump had the shared recognition to the effect that it is important to abide by the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous action in achieving peace, stability and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” KCNA said.

Trump said the United States would stop military exercises with South Korea while North Korea negotiated on denuclearization.

“We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith – which both sides are!” he said on Twitter.

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Trump’s reasoning for halting the exercises was “ridiculous”.

“It’s not a burden onto the American taxpayer to have a forward deployed force in South Korea,” Graham told CNN.

“It brings stability. It’s a warning to China that you can’t just take over the whole region. So I reject that analysis that it costs too much, but I do accept the proposition, let’s stand down (on military exercises) and see if we can find a better way here.”

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he hoped all parties could “grasp the moment of positive changes” on the peninsula to take constructive steps toward a political resolution and promoting denuclearization.

“At this time, everyone had seen that North Korea has halted missile and nuclear tests, and the United States and South Korea have to an extent restricted their military actions. This has de facto realized China’s dual suspension proposal,” he told a daily news briefing.

“When it comes to Trump’s statement yesterday that he would halt South Korea and the United States’ military drills, I can only say that China’s proposal is indeed practical and reasonable, is in line with all sides’ interests and can resolve all sides’ concerns.”

China, North Korea’s main ally, last year proposed what it calls a “dual suspension”, whereby North Korea suspend nuclear and missile tests, and South Korea and the United States suspend military drills.

U.S.-North Korea relations: https://tmsnrt.rs/2l2UwW7

SURPRISE

There was some confusion over precisely what military cooperation with South Korea Trump had promised to halt.

The U.S.-South Korean exercise calendar hits a high point every year with the Foal Eagle and Max Thunder drills, which both wrapped up last month. Another major exercise is due in August.

The United States maintains about 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, which remains in a technical state of war with the North after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce not a peace treaty.

Trump’s announcement on the exercises was a surprise even to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, who has worked in recent months to help bring about the Trump-Kim summit.

Asked about Trump’s comments, South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters there was a need to seek measures that would help improve engagement with North Korea but it was also necessary to confirm exactly what Trump had meant.

Moon will be chairing a national security meeting on Thursday to discuss the summit.

Trump’s administration had previously ruled out any concessions or lifting of sanctions without North Korea’s commitment to complete, verifiable and irreversible steps to scrap a nuclear arsenal that is advanced enough to threaten the United States.

But a joint statement issued after the summit said only that North Korea “commits to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is to lead the U.s. side in talks with North Korea to implement outcomes of the summit, arrived in South Korea on Wednesday, to be greeted by General Vincent Brooks, the top U.S. commander in South Korea, and U.S. Charge d’Affaires Marc Knapper.

Pompeo had a meeting with Brooks before heading to Seoul, according to a pool report. He is set to meet Moon on Thursday and hold a three-way meeting with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

On Tuesday, just after Trump’s surprise announcement, a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea said they had not received any instruction to cease joint military drills.

Although the Pentagon said Defence Secretary Jim Mattis was consulted, current and former U.S. defense officials expressed concern at the possibility the United States would halt the exercises without an explicit concession from North Korea lowering the threat.

CRITICS IN THE UNITED STATES

Critics in the United States said Trump had given away too much at a meeting that gave Kim long-sought international standing.

The North Korean leader had been isolated, his country accused of widespread human rights abuses and under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“For North Korea, they got exactly what they wanted,” said Moon Seong-mook, a former South Korean military official current head of the Unification Strategy Centre in Seoul.

“They had a summit as a nuclear state with Kim on equal turf with Trump, got the United States to halt joint military exercises with South Korea. It’s a win for Kim Jong Un.”

Japan’s Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said that, while North Korea had pledged denuclearization, no concrete steps had been taken and Japan would not let down its guard.

“We see U.S.-South Korean joint exercises and the U.S. military presence in South Korea as vital to security in East Asia,” Onodera told reporters. “It is up to the U.S. and South Korea to decide about their joint exercises. We have no intention of changing our joint drills with the U.S.”

Japan would only start shouldering the costs of North Korea’s denuclearization after the International Atomic Energy Agency restarts inspections, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

The Singapore summit did not get top billing in the main state news outlets in China.

The English-language China Daily said in an editorial that while it remained to be seen if the summit would be a defining moment, the fact it went smoothly was positive.

“It has ignited hopes that they will be finally able to put an end to their hostility and that the long-standing peninsula issues can finally be resolved. These hopes should not be extinguished,” it said.

(Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin, Joori Roh and David Brunnstrom in SEOUL, Tim Kelly in TOKYO, Phil Stewart in WASHINGTON, Christian Shepherd in BEIJING and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Trump, Kim agree on denuclearization, U.S. promises security guarantees

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Steve Holland, Soyoung Kim and Jack Kim

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged at a historic summit on Tuesday to move toward complete denuclearization, while the United States promised its old foe security guarantees.

The start of negotiations aimed at banishing what Trump described as North Korea’s “very substantial” nuclear arsenal could have far-reaching ramifications for the region, and in one of the biggest surprises of the day, Trump said he would stop military exercises with old ally South Korea.

But Trump and Kim gave few other specifics in a joint statement signed at the end of their summit in Singapore, and several analysts cast doubt on how effective the agreement would prove to be in the long run at getting North Korea to give up its cherished nuclear weapons.

“President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the statement said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The two leaders had appeared cautious and serious when they arrived for the summit at the Capella hotel on Singapore’s Sentosa, a resort island with luxury hotels, a casino and a Universal Studios theme park.

Body language expert said they both tried to project command as they met, but also displayed signs of nerves.

After a handshake, they were soon smiling and holding each other by the arm, before Trump guided Kim to a library where they met with only their interpreters. Trump had said on Saturday he would know within a minute of meeting Kim whether he would reach a deal.

Trump later told a news conference he expected the denuclearization process to start “very, very quickly” and it would be verified by “having a lot of people in North Korea”.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean officials would hold follow-up negotiations “at the earliest possible date”, the statement said.

Despite Kim announcing that North Korea was destroying a major missile engine-testing site, Trump said sanctions on North Korea would stay in place for now.

John Hopkins University’s North Korea monitoring project 38 North said last week North Korea had razed a facility for testing canister-based ballistic missiles.

U.S. President Donald Trump shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un his car, nicknamed "The Beast", during their walk around Capella hotel after a working lunch at a summit in Singapore, June 12, 2018, in this still image taken from video. Host Broadcaster/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. BROADCASTERS: NO USE AFTER 72 HOURS; DIGITAL: NO USE AFTER 30 DAYS.

U.S. President Donald Trump shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un his car, nicknamed “The Beast”, during their walk around Capella hotel after a working lunch at a summit in Singapore, June 12, 2018, in this still image taken from video. Host Broadcaster/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. BROADCASTERS: NO USE AFTER 72 HOURS; DIGITAL: NO USE AFTER 30 DAYS.

Trump said the regular military exercises the United States holds with South Korea were expensive and provocative. His halting of the drills could rattle South Korea and Japan, which rely on a U.S. security umbrella.

Trump said the exercises would not be revived “unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should”.

Earlier, Kim said he and Trump had “decided to leave the past behind. The world will see a major change”.

However, several experts said the summit failed to secure any concrete commitments by Pyongyang for dismantling its nuclear arsenal. They also noted the statement did not refer to human rights in one of the world’s most repressive nations.

TRADING FOR A PROMISE

Anthony Ruggiero, senior fellow at Washington’s Foundation for Defense of Democracies think-tank, said it was unclear if negotiations would lead to denuclearization, or end with broken promises, as had happened in the past.

“This looks like a restatement of where we left negotiations more than 10 years ago and not a major step forward,” he said.

Daniel Russel, formerly the State Department’s top Asia diplomat, said the absence of any reference to the North’s ballistic missiles was “glaring”.

“Trading our defense of South Korea for a promise is a lopsided deal that past presidents could have made but passed on,” he said.

North Korea has long rejected unilateral nuclear disarmament, instead referring to the denuclearization of the peninsula. That has always been interpreted as a call for the United States to remove its “nuclear umbrella” protecting South Korea and Japan.

People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on summit between the U.S. and North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, June 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on summit between the U.S. and North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, June 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

The document made no mention of the sanctions on North Korea and nor was there any reference to a peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which killed millions of people and ended in a truce.

But the joint statement did say the two sides had agreed to recover the remains of prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action, so they could be repatriated.

Trump said China, North Korea’s main ally, would welcome the progress he and Kim had had made.

“Making a deal is great thing for the world. It’s also a great thing for China,” he said.

China, which has opposed North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, said it hoped North Korea and the United States could reach a basic consensus on denuclearization.

“At the same time, there needs to be a peace mechanism for the peninsula to resolve North Korea’s reasonable security concerns,” China’s top diplomat, state councillor Wang Yi, told reporters in Beijing.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the Kremlin had a positive assessment of the summit but “the devil is in the details”, the TASS news agency reported.

If the summit does lead to a lasting detente, it could fundamentally change the security landscape of Northeast Asia, just as former U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 led to the transformation of China.

But Li Nan, senior researcher at Pangoal, a Beijing-based Chinese public policy think-tank, said the meeting had only symbolic significance.

“There is no concrete detail on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the provision of security guarantees by the United States,” Li said. “It is too early to call it a turning point in North Korea-U.S. relations.”

The dollar retreated after jumping to a 3-week high but global shares crept higher on news of the agreement.

Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2l2UwW7

HARD NEGOTIATOR

Trump said he had formed a “very special bond” with Kim and relations with North Korea would be very different in future. He called Kim “very smart” and a “very worthy, very hard negotiator”.

Just a few months ago, Kim was an international pariah accused of ordering the killing of his uncle, a half-brother and hundreds of officials suspected of disloyalty. Tens of thousands of North Koreans are imprisoned in labor camps.

Trump said he raised the issue of human rights with Kim, and he believed the North Korean leader wanted to “do the right thing”.

Trump also said U.S. college student Otto Warmbier did not die in vain days after he was released from North Korean custody in 2017, as his death helped initiate the process that led to the summit.

“I believe it’s a rough situation over there, there’s no question about it, and we did discuss it today pretty strongly … at pretty good length, and we’ll be doing something on it,” Trump said.

During a post-lunch stroll through the gardens of the hotel where the summit was held, Trump said the meeting had gone “better than anybody could have expected”.

Kim stood silently alongside, but he had earlier described the summit as a “a good prelude to peace”.

Trump also rolled out what amounted to a promotional video starring the two leaders before the talks, which was watched by the North Korean officials on an iPad.

As the two leaders met, Singapore navy vessels, and air force Apache helicopters patrolled, while fighter jets and a Gulfstream 550 early warning aircraft circled high overhead.

Within North Korea, the summit is likely to go down well.

“Signing the joint statement would show North Korean citizens that Kim Jong Un is not a leader just within North Korea but also in international society, especially with his position equivalent to Trump,” said Ahn Chan-il, a defector from North Korea who lives in the South.

(Additional reporting by Dewey Sim, Aradhana Aravindan, Himani Sarkar, Miral Fahmy, John Geddie, Joyce Lee, Grace Lee, Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom in Singapore and Christine Kim in Seoul; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Robert Birsel)

For high-stakes summit with Kim, Trump trusts his gut over note cards

FILE PHOTO: A combination photo shows U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un in Washignton, DC, U.S. May 17, 2018 and in Panmunjom, South Korea, April 27, 2018 respectively. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque and Korea Summit Press Pool/File Photos

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will deploy a mix of charm and pressure to coax North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into a deal to give up nuclear weapons, trusting his gut instinct over briefing books in his ability to strike an accord, aides and former administration officials said.

Kim, who at 34 is nearly half Trump’s age, will get a concentrated blast of what friends and foes of Trump have experienced since he became president: a volatile, unpredictable leader who can be at turns friendly or tough, or both at the same time.

The June 12 summit in Singapore will be the first face-to-face meeting between Trump, the former reality TV star who likes to keep people guessing up to a cliffhanger finish, and Kim, the heir to a reclusive dynasty with a history of reneging on promises to curb its nuclear ambitions.

While Trump has received a steady diet of briefings, verbal and written, about what to expect when he meets Kim, he trusts his intuition more than anything else, aides and former officials said.

His briefings have covered the gamut from Kim’s family history, the history of broken agreements with Pyongyang and the status of the North’s nuclear and missile programs, one source familiar with the matter said.

Aides expect Trump to try to use a personal touch to try build trust with Kim. The two leaders have done much to improve their relations after hurling insults and threats at each other such as who has the bigger nuclear button.

In his decades as a businessman before entering the White House 18 months ago, Trump did many deals and can bring different skills and techniques to negotiations, one source close to the president said.

“But it’s very ‘gut,’ which people are not used to in the diplomatic world because people are used to reading note cards,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Critics contend that Trump’s seat-of-the-pants approach may be too risky in dealing with North Korea, which alarmed Washington with its rapid advances on a long-range missile possibly capable of hitting the United States.

‘IT’S ABOUT ATTITUDE’

Trump has said his meeting with Kim is a get-to-know-you session and could be the first of several aimed at getting North Korea to scrap its nuclear arsenal.

Trump is preparing for the summit and taking it very seriously, said a senior White House official who asked not to be identified, “but locking himself away and doing what’s been done in the past clearly hasn’t worked.”

Trump himself said on Thursday that he did not think he had to prepare very much and that “it’s about attitude. It’s about willingness to get things done.”

Other U.S. officials have questioned whether Trump is doing enough to get up to speed.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came back from meeting Kim in Pyongyang to describe the North Korean leader as “a smart guy who’s doing his homework” for the summit, according to one U.S. official familiar with the matter.

However, the senior White House official pointed to Trump’s relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping as a sign of how he might deal with Kim: Trump frequently talks about how close he is to Xi, but this has not stopped him from talking tough on trade with Xi.

One former senior administration official who has watched Trump engage with world leaders said he has not had a consistent method in diplomatic dealings, describing him as “kind of all over the map” at times hectoring, at others friendly.

On Thursday, Trump dangled the prospect of inviting Kim Jong Un to the White House if he deemed the summit a success while also signaling he was willing to walk away if he thought talks did not go well.

Trump goes to Singapore confident in his deal-making skills based on his career as a New York real estate developer, which made him a billionaire.

His negotiating skills as president have had mixed success: his attempt to negotiate a healthcare deal with lawmakers fell apart last year, but then he was able to get tax-cut bill through Congress.

On the foreign policy front, his hardline stance on China to cut its massive trade surplus with the United States has risked a trade war, while talks to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement have stumbled badly.

But that is not likely to deter Trump from his negotiating style.

“I think he wants to go big or go home,” said Michael Allen, a former National Security Council official under Republican President George W. Bush.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom and John Walcott; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

Two Koreas make progress, agree to talks on military, family reunions

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon during their meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom, South Korea, June 1, 2018. Yonhap via REUTERS

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – The two Koreas agreed at a high-level meeting on Friday to hold talks this month on military issues and reunions of families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War, they said in a statement.

The meeting in the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea is the latest in a flurry of diplomatic activity intended to sustain a thaw in relations with the isolated North.

North Korea had called off a planned meeting with the South last month in protest against U.S.-South Korean air combat exercises before South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un put the process back on track during a surprise second summit on Saturday.

While the two Koreas work to improve their ties, North Korea is in talks with the United States on a proposed summit between Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, tentatively set for June 12 in Singapore.

Friday’s talks were led by South Korea’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon and Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the North’s committee for the peaceful reunification of the country, and were a follow-up to an agreement reached during the first summit between Kim and Moon in April.

Military talks between the old rivals will take place on June 14 on the northern side of Panmunjom, and a separate session on sports exchanges on the southern side on June 18, the two sides said.

Talks about reunions of families divided by the war, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, would be held on June 22 at the Mount Kumgang resort north of the border.

Family reunions are an emotional issue that could help restore trust but they have been stalled in the absence of political engagement, said Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, who was in Seoul to discuss plans for reunions and other issues.

“With more engagement and political openings, many hurdles will be lifted,” Sy told Reuters in an interview.

The federation hopes that North Korea will allow it to provide more aid. An estimated 10 million North Koreans or 40 percent of the population need humanitarian assistance, Sy said.

Both Koreas also agreed to an early launch of a liaison office in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, where they operated a factory park until its closure during tension in 2016, they said in a statement.

Cho and Ri also agreed to hold regular meetings to expedite various working-level talks which would include cooperation on railways, forests and culture.

‘GRAVE SITUATION’

During the talks, Ri blamed Cho for having brought about a “grave situation” that led to the North’s cancellation of last month’s talks.

Ri did not give specific information but Pyongyang has lashed out at Seoul for allowing Thae Yong Ho, a former North Korean diplomat to Britain who defected to the South in 2016, to launch a book in parliament in which he describes Kim as “impatient, impulsive and violent”.

The North also demands the repatriation of a dozen North Korean restaurant workers, who came to the South in 2016 via China. The North says they were abducted by the South, but it says they defected freely.

“We don’t talk about what happened in the past. You just need to not repeat it again,” Ri said.

Ri also said an unspecified issue had become “a source of mistrust” and would determine “whether a mood of reconciliation and cooperation, or mistrust and confrontation is created between the North and South”.

“It is a very serious problem,” Ri said. He did not elaborate.

In another indication the process is at times testy, Ri accused South Korean officials of misrepresenting a comment about their joint industrial zone at Kaesong.

Cho did not specify when asked about contentious issues but told reporters they did not discuss the military exercises or nuclear issues. He declined to comment on whether the North demanded the restaurant workers back.

North Korea suggested they hold a joint celebration of the anniversary of a 2000 inter-Korean summit this month in the South, an official at Seoul’s unification ministry told reporters.

But that would not be possible due to scheduling and logistics issues, Cho said.

“There were some things in common and also differences between both sides until we adopted the joint statement,” Ri said, without elaborating.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Joint Press Corps; Additional reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)