...while America crumbles
Trump Says He'd Meet with Kim Jong Un Again
SEOUL - U.S. President Donald Trump says he is open to another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even as Pyongyang signals it is uninterested in resuming stalled nuclear talks.
Trump made the comments Tuesday in an interview with Gray Television's Greta Van Susteren.
"I understand they want to meet and we would certainly do that," Trump said, later adding: "I would do it if I thought it was going to be helpful."
When Van Susteren, also a VOA contributor, asked if Trump thought such a meeting would be helpful, Trump replied: "Probably. I have a very good relationship with him, [so it] probably would be."
North Korea has twice in the past week said it is not interested in more talks with the U.S., insisting another summit would only benefit Trump's domestic political situation.
"Explicitly speaking once again, we have no intention to sit face to face with the U.S.," said Kwon Jong Gun, a North Korean foreign ministry official, in an article in the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Tuesday.
On Saturday, senior North Korean diplomat Choe Son Hui said "we do not feel any need to sit face to face with the U.S., as it does not consider the DPRK-U.S. dialogue as nothing more than a tool for grappling its political crisis."
Earlier this month, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he would like to see Trump and Kim hold another meeting before the U.S. presidential election in November.
The issue is likely to come up Wednesday when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun meets in Seoul with South Korean leaders on how to advance the stalled nuclear talks.
Speaking Wednesday after meeting his South Korean counterpart, Lee Do-hoon, Biegun downplayed North Korea's recent remarks.
"I do not take my direction from Vice Minister Choi Son Hui, nor from Ambassador John Bolton," the former White House National Security Advisor, who recently wrote a book highly critical of Trump's outreach to North Korea, Biegun said.
Biegun last month said an in-person summit before the election is unlikely, in part because of coronavirus concerns. On Wednesday, he did not publicly address the chances of another summit.
Some analysts have questioned whether Trump has other priorities; with just four months to go until the election, Trump is badly trailing Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in the polls. North Korea is not seen as a major issue in the U.S. election.
However, if Trump could revive the North Korea talks, it could help highlight what White House officials had once heralded as a signature Trump foreign policy achievement.
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