China is to blame

Trump says North Korea meeting may be delayed, hints China is to blame

The president says Xi is a ‘world-class poker player’ and suggests Kim changed his tone after meeting with the Chinese leader.

By CRISTIANO LIMA

President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that his historic meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, might be delayed and that President Xi Jinping of China could be responsible for a breakdown in the pre-summit talks.

Meeting with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea at the White House, Trump said there is a “very substantial chance” the talks could be postponed from the scheduled date of June 12 if the countries failed to come to terms on various issues. He also hinted that the Chinese leader might be behind North Korea’s return to more aggressive rhetoric against the U.S.

“If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later,” Trump said of the meeting during an extended exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “Maybe it will happen at a different time. But we will see. But we are talking.”

Questions have grown over whether the highly anticipated diplomatic talks will go on as planned next month in Singapore because of recent criticism from North Korea of joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. The North has also said it has no interest in a summit if the U.S. demands “unilateral nuclear abandonment.”

Trump on Tuesday floated the notion that Kim’s meeting with Xi earlier this month could be linked to his country’s sudden reluctance to engage diplomatically with the U.S.

“I think there was a little change in attitude from Kim Jong Un” after his second meeting with Xi in early May, Trump said. “So I don’t like that.”

Pressed by reporters on whether he believed Xi had discouraged Kim from meeting with U.S. leaders, Trump said no and that he wasn’t “blaming anybody.”

But he added: “President Xi is a world-class poker player and I’d probably, maybe [be] doing the same thing that he would do. But I will say this, there was a somewhat different attitude after that meeting, and I’m a little surprised.”

Xi and Kim met for the second time in northern China over the course of two days earlier this month, according to The Associated Press, amid a continued thaw in relations in the region. At the summit, which was preceded by a secretive meeting of the two heads of state in late March, Kim reportedly reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearization in anticipation of the meeting with Trump.

Shortly after they met, the president announced plans to speak with Xi about trade and North Korea, with Trump tweeting that “relationships and trust are building.”

Those relationships have been tested in recent months, though, as the president has challenged China to address its trade imbalance and threatened to impose major tariffs on its products.

The volatility of the dynamic was on full display Tuesday as Trump again voiced dissatisfaction with trade talks with China and denied reports that his administration is nearing a deal to rescue ZTE, the Chinese telecom. “I’m not satisfied, but we have a long way to go,” Trump said of the negotiations.

While Trump vowed as a presidential candidate to take a tougher stance on China and expressed a willingness to meet with Kim, his efforts to close deals on both fronts have bogged down as he simultaneously tackles two of the biggest foreign policy challenges of his presidency thus far.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose trip to North Korea in April paved the way for further discussions between the U.S. and North Korea, declined to speculate on the likelihood of the summit’s taking place as planned. But the top U.S. diplomat expressed his belief that U.S. and North Korean officials would come to terms.

“I’m confident we’ll get there,” Pompeo said of negotiations at a State Department briefing on Tuesday, adding, “We’re still working toward June 12.”

He declined to comment on Trump’s earlier remarks about China and Xi. But he offered effusive praise for their efforts in helping to bring North Korea to the table by joining the U.S. in exerting pressure on Pyongyang.

“The Chinese have offered historic assistance in the pressure campaign, literally historic assistance,” Pompeo said. “President Trump has made clear, and I’ve made clear, too, that it’s incredibly central that that pressure remain in place and that China continue to participate in that pressure campaign. We have every reason to expect that they will continue do so.”

Trump’s pessimism on the prospects of the meeting contrasted with a prediction offered by Chung Eui-yong, national security adviser to Moon, who placed the odds of Trump and Kim holding the summit as planned at “99.9 percent,” despite recent threats by the North to withdraw from the gathering.

“We believe there is a 99.9 percent chance the North Korea-U.S. summit will be held as scheduled,” the official said, according to the Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency.

But Chung added that officials were “preparing for many different possibilities” and making efforts “to understand the situation from the North’s perspective.”

Trump has insisted that talks with North Korean officials center on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a push that North Korea said could threaten its participation at the summit. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders framed the topic on Tuesday as a precondition for direct discussions with Kim.

But she added that U.S. officials would continue to prepare for the summit should North Korea demonstrate an interest in following through with its plans.

“If they want to meet, we will certainly be ready,” Sanders said during the White House press briefing. “The president, I think rightly, stated that if North Korea commits to denuclearize, it will be a bright feature for them, but we remain clear-eyed in these negotiations.”