‘I get along with him’: Trump touts North Korea meeting
Donald Trump has flagged plans to meet with Kim Jong-un – but the North Korean leader’s sister denied any communications between the leaders.
US President Donald Trump says he plans to meet with Kim Jong-un but the North Korean leader’s powerful sister cast doubt over possible talks.
Kim Yo Jong denied there are any communications between Trump and Kim.
She briefly said relations between her brother and Trump are “still excellent,” mentioning her brother’s past comments that he still has “good memories” of the US president. This suggests North Korea may be trying to manage relations with Trump, while seeking bigger concessions to restart talks.
Kim Yo Jong’s statement did not contain North Korea’s typically harsh rhetoric.
When asked by reporters on Wednesday if he will meet with Kim this year, Trump said: “Yeah, I will be.”
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He wouldn’t answer a question about whether he is exchanging letters with Kim but said he gets along with him.
The remarks come as Trump ordered Pentagon officials to cut short joint exercises with the South Korean military.
He wrote in a social media post the military exercises sent a message to Pyongyang that was “totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful”.
During Trump’s first term, Kim called Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard” and threatened that he had use of a “nuclear button” on his desk.
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The leaders’ relationship cooled after face-to-face meetings in 2018 and 2019, including a brief exchange at the demilitarised zone between the Koreas in which Trump became the first sitting US president to step into North Korean territory.
“I know Kim Jong-un very well, and he’s going to be fine as long as we have a smart president,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday during a tour of the helipad he is constructing on the White House’s historic south lawn.
“The fact that I get along with him – that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
There have been varying estimates by experts over the years on how many nuclear weapons North Korea has.
“He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But he’s got them,” Trump said.
In June, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that North Korea has “possibly assembled around 60 warheads, possesses enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more”.
-with AP
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