President Trump Says June 12 Summit With North Korea Is Back On
WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork/AP) -- President Donald Trump announced Friday that his previously canceled meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is back on.
The two will meet in Singapore on June 12, the president said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said "real progress" has been made in the last few days toward setting the conditions needed for Trump and Kim Jong Un to have a successful summit in Singapore.
The president, however, did not want to raise expectations.
"We're not going to go in and sign something on June 12, and we never were. We are going to start a process," he said Friday. "I told them today, take your time, we can go fast, we can go slowly. But I think they'd like to see something happen."
The U.S. is looking for verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, while North Korea wants economic sanctions lifted, CBS2's Dick Brennan reported.
Trump indicated he's continuing to use a carrot-and-stick approach to diplomacy.
"We had hundreds of new sanctions ready to go on, and he did not, the director, did not ask. But I said, 'I'm not going to put them on until such time as the talks break down,'" he said.
The president said he believes North Korea is committed to denuclearization and even suggested the summit could bring an official end to the Korean War.
"Can you believe that we're talking about the ending of the Korean War?" he said. "You're talking about 70 years."
Friday's announcement came after a top North Korean official arrived at the White House to deliver a letter to the president.
Kim Yong Chol met with Trump for two hours in the Oval Office when he delivered the letter. The meeting was expected to be much shorter. He headed to Washington Friday morning after meeting with Pompeo Thursday in New York.
"Good meeting today, I think it's a good start," Trump said.
The president teased reporters about the contents of the letter, saying, "That letter was a very nice letter. Oh, would you like to see what was in that letter? How much? How much? How much?"
But he later revealed he hadn't opened it.
"No, I haven't seen the letter yet. I purposely didn't open the letter. I haven't opened it," he said. "I may be in for a big surprise, folks."
An aide confirmed Trump did read the letter after he spoke to reporters and then left almost immediately for Camp David where he will prepare for the summit.
Previous attempts at nuclear diplomacy with the North by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush fell apart. Trump has repeatedly made it clear he's not under any illusions when it comes to a regime that often says one thing and does another.
"This summit will be historic by its very nature. No American president has sat down with a North Korean leader at this level before," CBS' Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan said, adding that right now, many details of the diplomacy must be worked out. "The goal has been to get to a point where North Korea, at a minimum, would allow in weapons inspectors to actually see what kind of arsenal they actually have."
Meanwhile, North and South Korea say they've agreed to more talks to promote peace.
(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
