‘Dotard’ Trump to meet ‘rocket man’ Kim

Seoul/Washington, March 9 

US President Donald Trump said he was prepared to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in what would be the first face-to-face encounter between leaders from the two countries and could mark a breakthrough in a standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons.

Kim had “committed to denuclearisation” and to suspending nuclear and missile tests, South Korea’s National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong told reporters at the White House on Thursday after briefing Trump on a meeting South Korean officials held with Kim earlier this week.

Kim and Trump have engaged in an increasingly bellicose exchange of insults over the North’s nuclear and missile programmes, which it pursues in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, before an easing of tension coinciding with last month’s Winter Olympics in the South.

“A meeting is being planned,” Trump said on Twitter after speaking to Chung, setting up what would be his biggest foreign policy gamble since taking office in January 2017.

Chung said Trump agreed to meet by May in response to Kim’s invitation. A senior US official said later it could happen “in a matter of a couple of months, with the exact timing and place still to be determined.”

Both Russia and China, who joined years of on-again, off-again “six-party” talks, along with the United States, the two Koreas and Japan, aimed at ending the standoff, welcomed the new, positive signals after months of deteriorating relations between North Korea and the US

Trump has derided the North Korean leader as a “maniac,” referred to him as “little rocket man” and threatened in a speech to the United Nations last year to “totally destroy” Kim’s country of 26 million people if it attacked the US or one of its allies. Kim responded by calling the US President a “mentally deranged US dotard.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-In, who led the pursuit of detente with North Korea during his country’s hosting of the Winter Olympics, said the summit would set a course for denuclearisation, according to a presidential spokesman. Trump had agreed to meet Kim without any preconditions, another South Korean official said. — Reuters

Road to peace

• Signs of a thaw emerged this year, with North and South Korea resuming talks and North Korea attending the Winter Olympics. During the Pyongyang talks this week, the two Koreas agreed on a summit in late April, their first since 2007
• Japan, however, remained cautious. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and Trump, in a call on Thursday, vowed to continue to enforce sanctions until Pyongyang took “tangible steps ... toward denuclearisation,” the White House said in a statement

Sanctions will stay

Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearisation with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze. Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!. — Donald Trump, US President.

A positive development: EU

We believe President Trump’s readiness to accept Kim Jong Un’s invitation to a summit meeting by May also represents a positive development. — Maja Kocijancic, EU spokeswoman

IAEA eyes ‘concrete progress’ 

The IAEA is closely following the recent developments related to the nuclear programme of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “We hope that these developments will lead to concrete progress regarding the DPRK nuclear issue. — IAEA