Trump says he will know in first minute if North Korea summit will succeed
LA MALBAIE, Quebec (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would know within a minute whether something good will come of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, which he described as a “mission of peace.”
“I think within the first minute I’ll know. Just my touch, my feel. That’s what I do,” Trump told reporters at a news conference at the G7 summit in Quebec. “And if I think it won’t happen - I’m not going to waste my time. I don’t want to waste his time.”
The main issue for the June 12 summit in Singapore is the U.S. demand for North Korea to abandon a nuclear weapons program that now threatens the United States.
“I have a clear objective, but I have to say - it’s going to be something that will always be spur of the moment,” Trump said. “You don’t know. This has not been done before at this level. This is a leader who really is an unknown personality.”
North Korea has rejected giving up its arsenal unilaterally and defends its nuclear and missile programs as a deterrent against what it sees as U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War.
“I feel really confident. It’s never been done, it’s never been tested,” said Trump. “So we are going in with a really positive spirit.”
Reporting by Roberta Rampton; writing by Lucia Mutikani and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Susan Thomas