Summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump 'unlikely' this year

"A surprise thing may still happen"
The pair are unlikely to meet this year, Kim Jong Un's sister has said
AP
Imogen Braddick10 July 2020

A meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump is unlikely to happen this year, Kim Yo Jong has said.

Kim Jong Un's sister said there was no reason for Pyongyang to agree to high-profile meetings when it is "not being substantially rewarded in return".

“But also, you never know,” Ms Kim said in a statement released through Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency. "That’s because a surprise thing may still happen, depending upon the judgement and decision between the two top leaders."

She added that if there is a need for summit talks, it is a US need, while for North Korea, it is “unpractical and does not serve us at all”.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Thursday he was "very hopeful" about resuming talks with North Korea about denuclearisation and appeared to leave open the possibility of another summit between the countries' leaders.

It comes after US deputy secretary of state Stephen Biegun met South Korean officials in Seoul, where he accused a senior North Korean nuclear negotiator of being "locked in an old way of thinking".

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un
Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP

Mr Trump and Mr Kim have met three times since embarking on high-stakes nuclear diplomacy in 2018.

But negotiations have faltered since their second summit in February 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korean demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capability.

Ms Kim said the diplomacy could be salvaged only by a reciprocal exchange of "irreversible simultaneous major steps".

“We would like to make it clear that it does not necessarily mean the denuclearisation is not possible. But what we mean is that it is not possible at this point of time,” she said.

North Korea has been pushing a concept of denuclearisation for decades which bears no resemblance to the American definition, with Pyongyang vowing to pursue nuclear development until the United States removes its troops and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan.

Experts say Mr Kim sees the diplomacy as an arms reduction negotiation between nuclear states rather than talks that would culminate in a full surrender of the weapons he sees as his strongest guarantee of survival.

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