US President Donald Trump has done little to quell mounting uncertainty surrounding a hallmark meeting with North Korea’s leader planned for next month, as he held key talks with his South Korean counterpart at the White House.
Trump is scheduled to meet Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12, but in recent weeks there have been growing concerns that the summit will not go ahead as scheduled.
“If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later,” Trump said of the planned meeting, addressing reporters alongside Moon Jae-in.
Asked to offer more details, the US president, who earlier this month withdrew from a multinational nuclear deal with Iran, muddied waters even further.
“There’s a chance that it will work out,” said Trump. “There’s a chance, there’s a very substantial chance it won’t work out,” he added.
“There are certain conditions that we want, and I think we’ll get those conditions. And if we don’t, we don’t have the meeting.”
Moon’s visit to the US had been seen as an opportunity to help fine-tune Trump’s strategy for talks with Kim in June, but a dramatic about-turn by Pyongyang last week added to the sense that the summit might collapse.
Last week, after a period of seemingly warming relations on the Korean peninsula, marked by a historic inter-Korea summit in April, Pyongyang suspended talks with Seoul due to its hosting of a joint military drill with the US.
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