Trump, Kim hail prospects for success at start of summit

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un sounded an optimistic note at the start of their second set of face-to-face meetings in eight months, as the US leader sought to advance nuclear talks that have largely stalled since their first summit in June.
The two leaders shook hands and made brief remarks ahead of a one-on-one meeting at a luxury hotel in Hanoi on Wednesday that kicked off their symbolism-rich follow-up to the unprecedented Singapore summit. They were slated to enjoy a “social dinner” at the century-old Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi along with a handful of senior officials including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Kim’s No. 2, Kim Yong Chol.
Sitting next to Kim, Trump called their first summit in Singapore “very successful” and said “I think this one will hopefully be equal or greater.” He said North Korea “has tremendous economic potential. I look forward to watching it happen.”
Kim smiled throughout Trump’s remarks, and said the two sides overcame unspecified obstacles ahead of the latest summit.
‘I Will Do My Best’
“I am certain that the great outcome that everyone is glad to see will be made, and I will do my best,” said Kim in Korean, wearing an all-black suit.
More substantial announcements are expected on Thursday, when Trump hopes to build on their broad agreement last year to “work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” While Kim has refrained from weapons testing since launching a missile in 2017 capable of hitting the US, he’s made no commitments to disclose or dismantle his nuclear arsenal and appears to have expanded it.Trump dismissed speculation about the Hanoi summit’s outcomes on Wednesday, while at the same time hinting he might involve regional allies and adversaries in the nuclear talks.
North Korea participated in so-called six-party talks with those countries and the US after withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 2003. But Pyongyang abandoned the talks in 2009, evicted international inspectors and resumed uranium enrichment.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who made an official visit to Vietnam just days before Trump and Kim arrived in Hanoi, said this week that the six-party talks should be revived if relations between the US and North Korea improve, according to Russia’s TASS news service.
Despite the tropical backdrop of the Vietnamese capital, Trump couldn’t escape political turmoil back in Washington, where his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, prepared to testify to a congressional committee that Trump knew of efforts to get Democratic Party emails released through
Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign. The Democratic-controlled US House also voted to block the president’s effort to circumvent Congress to pay for construction of a wall on the Mexico border with Mexico.
Between meetings with Vietnamese officials and dinner with Kim on Wednesday, Trump issued a tweet accusing Cohen of “lying in order to reduce his prison time” and attacking Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal for falsely saying he served in Vietnam. “I have now spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, the third rate Senator from Connecticut,” Trump wrote, adding that he discussed the lawmaker with Vietnamese leaders.
The tweet about Blumenthal invited re-examination of Trump’s own Vietnam War-era experience. The president received five deferments from the Vietnam draft, including a medical deferment for supposed bone spurs in his feet.