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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

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

“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.

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

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)

North Korea talks heading in right direction, U.S. envoy says

North Korean envoy Kim Yong Chol speaks ahead of a working dinner with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York, U.S., May 30, 2018. U.S. Department of State/Handout via REUTERS

By Steve Holland and Hyonhee Shin

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – Talks between the United States and North Korea are headed in the right direction, a top U.S. envoy said on Friday, ahead of a rare visit to the White House by a senior North Korean official.

At a planned meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, Kim Yong Chol, a close aide of Kim Jong Un, will hand over a letter from the North Korean leader as the two sides try to put a derailed summit meeting back on track.

Trump hopes to meet Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12 and pressure him to give up his nuclear weapons, although he conceded on Thursday that might require more rounds of direct negotiations.

“I’d like to see it done in one meeting,” Trump told Reuters. “But often times that’s not the way deals work. There’s a very good chance that it won’t be done in one meeting or two meetings or three meetings. But it’ll get done at some point.”

In Seoul, U.S. negotiators expressed optimism after meeting their North Korean counterparts for preparatory talks at Panmunjom, on the fortified border between the two Koreas.

“We believe that we’re moving in the right direction to the ongoing series of consultations, including (U.S. Secretary of State) Pompeo’s engagement with Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol … our discussions at Panmunjom and of course the discussions in Singapore as well,” U.S Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim, a veteran diplomat and expert on North Korea, told South Korea’s foreign minister, Kang Kyung-hwa.

The discussions in Panmunjom have focused on possible agenda items for Trump and Kim, while meetings in Singapore are more focused on logistics, officials said.

In a separate high-level meeting on Friday, officials from North and South Korea agreed to hold talks later this month on military issues and reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, they said.

It was not clear what North Korea’s leader wrote in his letter to Trump, and White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said late on Thursday that the details of the meeting in Washington were still being worked out.

Pompeo is slated to meet Trump at the White House at 1 p.m. (1700 GMT).

After trading threats of war last year, the two men agreed to meet for an historic summit on June 12. But Trump canceled last week, citing Kim’s “tremendous anger and open hostility” in a string of public statements.

Even as he pulled out, though, Trump urged Kim to “call me or write” if he wanted to revive the meeting.

Within a day, both sides were in new talks to save the summit, and Kim Yong Chol flew to New York this week to meet Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, raising hopes that the summit might be back on.

Despite saying the two sides made “real progress”, Pompeo also cautioned that there might be no quick solution.

“They’ll have to choose a path that is fundamentally different than the one that their country has proceeded on for decades. It should not be to anyone’s surprise that there will be moments along the way, that this won’t be straightforward,” he said.

NUCLEAR THREAT

North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has made significant advances in recent years and poses a threat to the United States. Trump’s main goal in any talks is to eliminate that threat.

Kim has rejected previous U.S. calls for North Korea’s unilateral nuclear disarmament and argued instead for a “phased” approach to denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula. That in the past has also meant removal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella protecting South Korea and Japan.

In Pyongyang, Kim hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday, while a Kremlin spokesman told reporters a summit between Russian and North Korean leaders could take place.

During his meeting with Lavrov, Kim said his will to see denuclearization on the peninsula remained “unchanged, consistent and fixed” and hoped improved North Korea-U.S. relations would be solved on a “stage-by-stage” basis.

The North Korean visit to the White House on Friday will be the first since 2000, when President Bill Clinton met senior figure Jo Myong Rok in an unsuccessful attempt to win the reclusive nation’s nuclear disarmament.

They met for 45 minutes and Jo brought Clinton a letter from Kim Jong Il, the late father of North Korea’s current leader.

Jo wore full military uniform when he was with Clinton, then donned a business suit to meet then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

To make his trip this week, Kim Yong Chol needed special permission for travel to the United States because he had been blacklisted.

South Korea has accused him of masterminding deadly attacks on a South Korean warship and an island in 2010, and U.S intelligence linked him to a cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)

Exclusive: Trump – nuclear deal may take more than one meeting with North Korea’s Kim

U.S. President Donald Trump waves before boarding Air Force One to depart for travel to Texas from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., May 31, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

y Steve Holland

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday it may take more than one meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to seal a denuclearization deal and that he would like Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear weapons program as quickly as possible under any agreement.

Trump, in a brief interview with Reuters aboard Air Force One as he flew to Texas for Republican fund raising events, said he was still hoping for a summit with Kim on June 12 in Singapore.

The president emphasized that it may take more than one meeting to reach an agreement.

“I’d like to see it done in one meeting. But oftentimes that’s not the way deals work,” Trump said.

“There’s a very good chance that it won’t be done in one meeting or two meetings or three meetings. But it’ll get done at some point. It may get done really nicely and really intelligently, or it may not get done intelligently. It may have to be the hard way,” he said.

The president said he believed Kim wanted a deal.

“But I think it’ll get done in a very smart, organized fashion and I think that Kim Jong Un wants to see it also. And I’m going to be very happy when the day arrives when we can take sanctions off, and have a very good relationship with the entire Korean Peninsula,” Trump said.

U.S.-ally South Korea and North Korea have technically been at war for decades, even though the Korean War’s military combat ended in 1953, because a peace agreement was never signed.

The president said he will most likely be visited by North Korean envoy Kim Yong Chol on Friday at the White House after the official’s meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York.

The North Korean official is carrying a letter to Trump from Kim Jong Un.

“I look forward to seeing the letter and I look forward to June 12 where hopefully we can make progress,” Trump said.

Disputes between Washington and Pyongyang led Trump to announce last Thursday he was canceling the meeting with Kim, only to say the following day that it could still go ahead. The days since have seen a flurry of diplomatic efforts to get the summit back on track.

In a letter to Kim last Thursday cancelling the summit, Trump accused North Korea of “open hostility,” but urged Kim to “call me or write” if he had a change of heart.

In his interview with Reuters, the U.S. president said a nuclear deal with North Korea would have to cover its missile program.

“It means missiles,” Trump said.

He said he wanted to see denuclearization occur at a rapid pace.

“I’d like to see a total denuclearization in as quick a period of time as is practicable,” he said. “You’re talking about machinery, you’re talking about things that can’t necessarily happen immediately but they can happen in as rapid a fashion as they can happen. That’s what I want to happen.”

North Korea has made advances in missile technology in recent years but Trump has sworn not to allow it to develop nuclear missiles that could hit the United States.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Bill Trott and Grant McCool)

Explainer: The man sent by North Korean leader to U.S. for high-level talks

Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics - Closing ceremony - Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium - Pyeongchang, South Korea - February 25, 2018 - Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party Central Committee, watches the closing ceremony. REUTERS/Patrick Semansky/Pool

By Doina Chiacu and Hyonhee Shin

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – When Kim Yong Chol lands in New York this week, he will become the most senior North Korean envoy to hold talks with American officials on U.S. soil in 18 years.

The former spy chief is a trusted adviser to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, playing a pivotal role in preparations for an historic summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.

In a sign of his importance, Trump announced Kim Yong Chol’s New York trip on Twitter on Tuesday.

The White House said he would meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later this week, the most high-level contact between the two countries in the United States since Jo Myong Rok, a marshal, met President Bill Clinton in 2000.

DIPLOMATIC HEAVYWEIGHT

Kim Yong Chol is a four-star general, vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, and director of the United Front Department, which is responsible for inter-Korean relations.

Such positions, and his omnipresence before and during inter-Korean summits in April and on Saturday, make him one of the most powerful people in North Korea, South Korean officials say.

He has played a central role in the recent thaw in relations between the North and South Korea, as well as the United States.

Sent as Kim Jong Un’s envoy to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, Kim Yong Chol told South Korean President Moon Jae-in Pyongyang was open to talks with Washington, the first indication North Korea was changing course after months of trading threats and insults with the United States.

He and Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, were the only two officials to join the North Korean leader at the two inter-Korean summits.

He also coordinated Kim Jong Un’s two meetings with Pompeo in Pyongyang.

FILE PHOTO: Kim Yong Chol (front), vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee and formerly head of a top North Korean military intelligence agency, arrives at the international airport in Beijing, China in this photo taken by Kyodo on May 30, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

SPY UNDER SANCTIONS

Kim Yong Chol was previously chief of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a top North Korean military intelligence agency, and has spent nearly 30 years as a senior member of the intelligence community.

The United States and South Korea blacklisted him for supporting the North’s nuclear and missile programs in 2010 and 2016, respectively. A visit to the United States would indicate a waiver was granted.

He was accused by South Korea of masterminding deadly attacks on a South Korean navy ship and an island in 2010. He was also linked by U.S. intelligence to a devastating cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014.

North Korea denied any involvement in either incident.

Kim Yong Chol “stormed out of the room” during military talks in 2014 when the South demanded an apology for the 2010 attacks, according to South Korean officials.

“He is a tough negotiator and an expert on inter-Korean talks, but it is true that he had been a symbol of hawks rather than harmony and reconciliation until this year,” said Moon Sang-gyun, a former South Korean defense official.

BODYGUARD TO KIM’S FATHER

Kim Yong Chol served in the military police in the demilitarized zone on the border of the two Koreas. He was also a bodyguard to Kim Jong Il, the former leader and late father of Kim Jong Un, according to North Korea Leadership Watch, an affiliate of the 38 North think tank.

He has been closely linked to Kim Jong Un’s succession and has been seen flanking the leader on several public visits.

Kim Yong Chol is known to be difficult to work with, sarcastic and not sufficiently deferential to his superiors, Leadership Watch said.

He has also suffered tough times. South Korea’s intelligence agency said in 2015 Kim Yong Chol was demoted to a three-star general after dozing off during a meeting.

In 2016, Seoul’s unification ministry said he was briefly sent to a re-education camp for his “overbearing” manner and abuse of power.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in WASHINGTON and Hyonhee Shin in SEOUL; Editing by Mary Milliken, Bill Trott and)

China to host Iran to avoid project disruption amid nuclear deal doubt

FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attends a meeting with Muslim leaders and scholars in Hyderabad, India, February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will host Iranian President Hassan Rouhani next month at a regional summit aimed at avoiding disruption of joint projects, its foreign ministry said on Monday, as major powers scramble to save Iran’s nuclear deal after the United States pulled out.

Rouhani will pay a working visit to China and attend the summit of the China and Russia-led security bloc the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the ministry said.

It did not give exact dates for his visit, but the summit is scheduled to be held on the second weekend of June in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao.

Iran is currently an observer member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, though it has long sought full membership.

“Our hope is that China and Iran will have close consultation on the basis of observing the deal and push forward development of bilateral cooperation,” Chinese deputy foreign minister Zhang Hanhui said at a briefing.

“We should together look into how to avoid major disruption of joint projects between the two sides,” he added.

Russia has previously argued that with Western sanctions against Tehran lifted, it could finally become a member of the bloc which also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, Pakistan and India.

The 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers lifted international sanctions on Tehran. In return, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear activities, increasing the time it would need to produce an atom bomb if it chose to do so.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States this month, calling the agreement deeply flawed, European states have been scrambling to ensure Iran gets enough economic benefits to persuade it to stay in the deal.

China has also strongly supported the deal and is one of its signatories.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the leaders of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, were also invited to hold official bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the summit, the foreign ministry said.

The summit, which runs from June 9-10, will attempt to create new agreements on security issues such as counter-terrorism and drug smuggling among the seven member bloc.

Jointly led by Russia and China, the SCO was launched in 2001 to combat radical Islam and other regional security concerns. India and Pakistan became full members last year.

Iran has long eyed an SCO membership and China has said it supports its application.

(Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry)

Foreign media start marathon journey to North Korea nuclear test site

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – International journalists left on a marathon journey to a North Korean nuclear test site on Wednesday, after Pyongyang belatedly cleared a number of South Korean media to witness what it says will be the dismantling of its only nuclear test facility.

Travel will involve an 11-hour train ride, a four-hour bus journey and then a hike of another hour, a reporter with Russia’s RT said on Twitter.

North Korea has suspended talks with the South and threatened to pull out of an upcoming summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, but the invitation to media was seen as an indication that its unexpected offer to end its nuclear tests still held.

North Korea invited international media to observe the destruction with explosives of the Punggye-ri site, but not experts as initially promised, casting doubt over how verifiable the plan is and whether it will be safe.

It had also declined to take the South Korean reporters after calling off planned inter-Korean talks in protest against U.S.-South Korean “Max Thunder” air combat drills. North Korea has always justified its nuclear program as a deterrent against perceived U.S. hostility.

Reporters from news outlets from the other countries said on Twitter they arrived in the North Korean port city of Wonsan on Tuesday. The eight South Koreans arrived in Wonsan on Wednesday, where they were forced to leave their radiation detectors, satellite phones and Bluetooth mouses before they all set off for the test site, according to South Korean media pool reports.

North Korea had announced it would use explosives to close test tunnels, expected on Thursday or Friday.

Seoul’s unification ministry welcomed Pyongyang’s decision to accept the South Koreans.

“We hope for an early realization of complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula through a North Korea-U.S. summit and dialogue of various levels, starting with the abolition of the nuclear test site,” ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun told a news briefing.

SUMMIT IN DOUBT

North Korea’s last-minute acceptance of South Korean reporters came amid concerns that Kim was starting to back away from his promise to scrap the nuclear program, which it has pursued in defiance of years of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

International journalists left on a marathon journey to a North Korean nuclear test site on Wednesday, after Pyongyang belatedly cleared a number of South Korean media to witness what it says will be the dismantling of its only nuclear test facility.

The North has threatened to pull out of the summit with Trump in Singapore on June 12 if Washington demands it unilaterally abandons its nuclear arsenal. It has also criticized the Max Thunder drills.

Trump said on Tuesday there was a “substantial chance” the summit would not take place.

China said that both the United States and North Korea were still making preparations for the summit and Beijing hoped both sides can “clear away distractions.”

“We really hope that all sides, especially the United States and North Korea, can seize the opportunity, meet each other halfway, and resolve in a balanced way each other’s concerns,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news briefing.

“We still look forward to the meeting between the U.S. and North Korean leaders proceeding smoothly and achieving positive results.”

Lu said China had played a positive role on the Korean peninsula, after Trump reiterated his suggestion that Kim’s recent meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping had influenced Kim to harden his stance ahead of the summit.

Seoul is seeking to mediate between the United States and North Korea, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in visiting Washington on Tuesday to urge Trump to seize the rare opportunity to meet Kim.

High-level intra-Korea talks will likely resume after Friday, once Max Thunder finishes, Moon’s media secretary Yoon Young-chan said.

A senior South Korean official told reporters on condition of anonymity: “Given the North’s thinking and statements alike, we would be able to turn around the mood after the Max Thunder drills from the current standoff and restart dialogue.”

North Korea has rejected unilateral disarmament and given no indication that it is willing to go beyond statements of broad support for the concept of universal denuclearisation.

It has said in previous, failed talks that it could consider giving up its arsenal if the United States provided security guarantees by removing its troops from South Korea and withdrew its so-called nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan.

The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

(Additional reporting by Joori Roh and Josh Smith in SEOUL, and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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