BREAKING: Trump cancels meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un
President Trump has now canceled the highly anticipated summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” displayed in statements made by Kim recently.
North Korea and the U.S. have been working for many weeks to stage what would have been a historic meeting of the two leaders in Singapore on June 12, it would have been an unprecedented event.
“I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote in a letter to Kim that released by the White House. The Original letter is attached below.
“Therefore, please let this letter to serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place.
Sadly, I was forced to cancel the Summit Meeting in Singapore with Kim Jung Un. pic.twitter.com/qEoi9ymUEz
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2018
Even though the tone of the letter was mostly regretful, but it contained conciliatory passages, moreover it included a reminder of the size and power of the US nuclear arsenal.
“You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive that I pray to God they will never have to be used,” Trump wrote.
It was a surprise that the cancellation of the summit came two days after a visit to the White House by Moon Jae-in, who then made hopeful statements on the long-planned historic summit that he portrayed as vital to peace on the Korean peninsula.
Moon held an emergency meeting with top officials just before midnight local time on Thursday night. His office appeared surprised by the announcement, with spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom saying: “We are trying to figure out what President Trump’s intention is and the exact meaning of it.”
Pyongyang also appeared to be taken entirely by surprise.
“There was a real sense of shock amongst the people I was sitting with, the North Korean officials,” Will Ripley, a CNN reporter, said shortly after he read Trump’s letter to them.
Speaking in Geneva, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said he was “deeply concerned” about the cancellation of the summit, and appealed for a continued dialogue to “find a path to the peaceful and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, also blamed the summit’s cancellation on North Korean rhetoric “and the fact that we have not been able to conduct the preparation between our two teams that would be necessary to have a chance for the successful summit”.
North Korea analysts said there were deeper problems underlying the proposed summit than the heavy-handed use of menacing language.
“Expectations were overblown for the North Korea summit, and there are legitimate reasons to question whether Kim Jong-un is serious about giving up its nuclear weapons, but Trump’s letter is an overreaction and ignores the role that top officials played in provoking this crisis,” Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, said.
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Zachary Ballif The Kootneeti Team - White House Watch
