HANOI, Vietnam — President Donald Trump said he walked away from his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because Kim demanded the U.S. lift all of its sanctions, a claim that North Korea’s delegation called a rare news conference in the middle of the night to deny.
So who’s telling the truth? In this case, it seems that the North Koreans are. And it’s a demand they have been pushing for weeks in lower-level talks.
Trump’s much-anticipated meeting with Kim, held in the Vietnamese capital Wednesday and Thursday, ended abruptly and without the two leaders signing any agreements. Trump spoke with reporters soon after the talks broke down and said the dispute over sanctions was the deal breaker.
“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that,” he said. “We had to walk away from that.”
Hours later, two senior members of the North’s delegation told reporters that was not what Kim had demanded. They insisted Kim had asked only for partial sanctions relief in exchange for shutting down the North’s main nuclear complex. Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said the North was also ready to offer in writing a permanent halt of the country’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
Vice Foreign Minister Choe Sun Hui said Trump’s reaction puzzled Kim and added that Kim “may have lost his will (to continue) North Korea-U.S. dealings.”
According to a senior official who briefed the media on condition he not be named because he was not authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly, the North Koreans “basically asked for the lifting of all sanctions.”
But he acknowledged the North’s demand was only for Washington to back the lifting of United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed since March 2016 and didn’t include the other resolutions going back a decade more. What Pyongyang was seeking, he said, was the lifting of sanctions that impede the civilian economy and the people’s livelihood — as Ri had claimed.