Trump meeting is a win for North Korea's Kim: analysts

[DonViejo]

9 MAR 2018

Nuclear-armed North Korea has outplayed a diplomatically naive US president with the agreement to hold a summit, analysts say, and has no intention of giving up its atomic weapons.

Donald Trump hailed the planned meeting with Kim Jong Un as "great progress" on the road to denuclearisation. But analysts warn that agreeing to a sit-down so early in the process gives Pyongyang something it desperately wants without extracting meaningful concessions in return.

"North Korea has been seeking a summit with an American president for more than 20 years," pointed out arms control specialist Jeffrey Lewis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

"It has literally been a top foreign policy goal."

The US needs to talk to North Korea, he tweeted, but Kim was not seeking the meeting "so that he can surrender North Korea's weapons".

"Kim is inviting Trump to demonstrate that his investment in nuclear and missile capabilities has forced the United States to treat him as an equal."

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https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/trump-meeting-win-north-koreas-kim-analysts-doc-1273of1

[Blue_true]

1. I don't agree.

I expect Trump to screw it up, but this is a potentially historic opportunity. I just wish that Obama or someone smarter than Trump had gotten such an opening.

It was NOT NK that opened the nuclear genie in respect to that country, it was us. Somehow, our politicians need to accept and admit that before moving forward.

My only concern is this gives Trump oxygen, which he will likely use to evade the events that have been pounding him. I see his supporters out after they have spent the last month in a bunker.