President Trump said he would cancel or even possibly walk out of an in-the-works upcoming summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un if the meeting doesn’t prove “fruitful,” he said Wednesday.
“If I think it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we’re not going to go,” Trump said during a press conference in Florida with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “If the meeting, when I’m there, is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting.”
“I think we’re going to be successful,” Trump added. “But for any reason if I think we’re not, we end.”
Pres. Trump on anticipated meeting with North Korea: “If we don’t think it’s going to be successful, we won’t have it…If the meeting, when I’m there, is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting.” https://t.co/YtxzmdWHjm pic.twitter.com/bgHLh0Rofa
— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2018
The upcoming and highly anticipated summit would be the first time a sitting U.S. President has with a North Korean leader. There is not date or location for the meeting yet, although Trump said “five locations” are being considered, and that the historical meeting would take place sometime before May.
North Korea is reportedly ready to discuss denuclearization at the meeting.
President Trump on Wednesday morning tweeted and confirmed that former CIA Director and nominee for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un last week, and that the meeting went “very smoothly.”
“Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un in North Korea last week. Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed. Details of Summit are being worked out now,” Trump tweeted. “Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”
Pompeo’s meeting was an unprecedented visit ahead of what is expected to be a huge and important meeting with Kim Jong Un and President Trump sometime before May.
Pompeo met with Kim to start laying the groundwork for that meeting.
President Trump on Tuesday had said the U.S. is talking directly with North Korea in anticipation of a summit sometime before May with Kim Jong Un, and that the talks are taking place at “extremely high levels.”
Trump also gave his “blessing” for North and South Korea to end their decades-long war that has been ongoing on the Korean Peninsula.
North and South Korea are reportedly going to agree to bring an end to the decades-long military conflict on the Korean Peninsula, a South Korean newspaper reported Tuesday.
The leaders of North and South Korea – Kim Jong Un and President Moon Jae-in, respectively – are slated to meet next week, on April 27, in advance of the tri-nation summit with President Trump sometime before May.
It was reported that the two nations are going to officially put an end to the Korean military conflict, which technically lasted from 1950 to 1953 but was ended with a truce, not a peace treaty, according to the South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo, which cited an unnamed South Korean official.
