Trump Says North Korea Envoys to Deliver Him a Letter from Kim Jong-un

Image

President Trump talking to reporters about North Korea as he boarded Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews for a trip to Dallas and Houston, Texas, on Thursday.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

By Gardiner Harris

May 31, 2018

President Trump said on Thursday that a delegation of officials from North Korea is expected to deliver him a letter from their leader, Kim Jong-un, in an extraordinary meeting on Friday in Washington.

Mr. Trump told reporters it was not clear if the show of tenuous détente would be enough to strike a deal to meet for a summit in Singapore, which was set for June 12 before the president called it off last week.

But the president said negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang “are in good hands.”

His comments came minutes after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began formal talks in New York with a senior North Korean official to potentially salvage the summit, which both sides hope will end decades of enmity and suspicion.

In an early-morning tweet, Mr. Pompeo outlined his message to Kim Yong-chol, the former North Korean intelligence chief and top nuclear arms negotiator who flew into New York on Wednesday on an Air China flight from Beijing.

“The potential summit between @POTUS and Chairman Kim presents #DPRK with a great opportunity to achieve security and economic prosperity,” Mr. Pompeo wrote. “The people of #NorthKorea can have a brighter future and the world can be more peaceful.”

The morning tweet was more appealing than the one Mr. Pompeo posted Wednesday night, in which he reiterated that, “We are committed to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Mr. Trump’s comments to reporters on Thursday morning came shortly before he boarded a flight to Texas for a day trip.

The expected encounter between the president and the North Korean delegation that Mr. Trump announced as he was leaving came as a surprise, and he offered no details. It would be a rare if not unprecedented encounter in Washington for an American president, given the diplomatic animosity that has simmered for generations between the United States and North Korea.

In New York, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Kim shared a 90-minute dinner together on Wednesday night, and pictures released by the State Department showed the secretary of state pointing out the Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan, which replaced the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

The meetings are being held in a three-bedroom apartment on the 38th Street and First Avenue normally occupied by a senior American diplomat posted to the United Nations. American and North Korean envoys have also been meeting in Panmunjom, in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, and another set of officials have held talks in Singapore to hash out the logistics of turning the June 12 summit back on.

The blizzard of meetings represent a breathtaking change from the bellicose rhetoric that the two sides lobbed at each other for much of last year, with Mr. Trump threatening to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangered the United States.

But the two sides still remain far apart. The Trump administration has largely insisted that North Korea commit itself to a rapid and complete unwinding of its nuclear program, although the president recently opened the door to a phased dismantling.

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, who served as an early mediator between Washington and Pyongyang, is known to favor a step-by-step process that would lift some sanctions against North Korea in exchange for verifiable steps to stop or reverse its weapons programs. North Korea is thought to favor such an approach.

A senior South Korean official warned on Wednesday that differences between the two sides are substantial.

“It won’t be easy to narrow the gap and find common ground, but I think it would not be impossible,” Cho Myoung-gyon, the South’s unification minister, said in a speech in Seoul.

Deep divisions remain within the Trump administration, and has led in part to the sharp reversals in approach to the reclusive country. Mr. Trump impulsively accepted in March the invitation to meet with Mr. Kim — the summit that he canceled last week, only to reverse himself a day later.

John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, is known to be skeptical of the utility of the summit. Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis are both reportedly in favor of the meeting.

Mr. Pompeo in particular has become deeply invested in the outreach to North Korea. Before becoming secretary of state, and while still serving as C.I.A. director, he made a secret visit to Pyongyang earlier this year to lay the groundwork for a summit. He returned in early May to bring home three American citizens who were detained in North Korea.