Despite the White House’s dramatic Thursday evening announcement of President Trump’s decision to accept a meeting invitation from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the historic summit between two feuding leaders is far from a certain occurrence.
White House officials have stressed that Trump will not sit down with Kim until Pyongyang meets a set of preconditions, but aides have declined to specify what those preconditions might entail.
And although White House press secretary Sarah Sanders argued Friday that Trump “is getting exactly what he wants” by securing a prospective meeting with Kim, she noted the encounter remains contingent on North Korea taking “concrete steps” toward denuclearization before the administration sets a date and location.
White House officials have highlighted the concessions North Korea made to earn Trump’s tentative agreement to attend the meeting, all while making no concessions to Pyongyang about U.S. military presence in the region or the American alliance with South Korea. North Korea has agreed to cease its nuclear and ballistic missile tests while its leaders negotiate with their South Korean counterparts, and the Kim regime has committed to denuclearizing at some point in the future.
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Trump said just days before announcing the Kim summit that a dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang would be “a great thing for the world.”
However, his entire administration did not appear to be lined up behind the idea of talks with the North Koreans heading into the unexpected announcement on Thursday of a summit.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday he had spoken to Trump earlier that morning, but noted the president made the decision to accept Kim’s invitation on his own. Just hours before the White House announced Trump’s meeting with Kim, Tillerson said the U.S. was “a long ways from negotiations” with North Korea.
Speaking in Djibouti on Friday, Tillerson argued “people continue to struggle with the difference” between negotiations and “talks,” claiming the words denote different types of diplomatic encounters.
“My comments have been that we’re – the conditions are not right for negotiations, but we’ve been saying for some time we are open to talks,” Tillerson said.
“In terms of the decision to engage between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, that’s a decision the president took himself,” the secretary of state added. “I spoke to him very early this morning about that decision and we had a good conversation. This is something that he’s had on his mind for quite some time, so it was not a surprise in any way, because I think this has long been something.”
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Trump and Kim Jong Un's meeting could fall apart before it happens https://t.co/glsPrI9jAj pic.twitter.com/3UdpoFkeYZ
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) March 10, 2018
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