WASHINGTON – Donald Trump deployed his spy chief Sunday to sell his snapdecision to engage North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in momentous nuclear talksthat the president himself predicted would be a “tremendous success” butothers warn carry big risks.
CIA director Mike Pompeo portrayed North Korea as buckling under thepressure of US-led international sanctions, and insisted there would be nolet-up for the duration of the negotiations.
“Never before have we had the North Koreans in a position where theireconomy was at such risk, where their leadership was under such pressure,”he said on Fox News Sunday.
“Make no mistake: while these negotiations are going on, there will be noconcessions made,” he said.
The Sunday talk show appearances by Pompeo and others served to answercritics who warn that the talks, entered into by an impulsive,inexperienced president, carry high risks.
If they fail, the two nuclear-armed states could then be left with fewoptions short of military confrontation, experts on the years-long impassewith North Korea say.
Pompeo suggested that Trump understood the dangers. “The president isn?tdoing this for theater, he is going there to solve a problem.”
Trump used a Saturday night campaign rally in Pennsylvania steel country todefend his decision to sit down with Kim after months of insult-filledbrinkmanship, replete with nuclear threats.
He said the United States had “shown great strength” when tensions werehigh but the regime’s leaders “want to make peace.”
“I think it’s time,” Trump told supporters.
Before boarding his Marine One helicopter for the rally, he told reporters:”I think North Korea is going to go very well, I think we will havetremendous success … We have a lot of support.”
“The promise is they wouldn’t be shooting off missiles in the meantime, andthey’re looking to de-nuke. So that’d be great.”
– What next? –
Trump accepted the invitation Thursday after it was relayed to him in animpromptu White House meeting with the South Korean national securityadviser, Chung Eui-yong.
Chung, who had met with Kim previously, told Trump that the North Koreanleader had pledged to halt missile and nuclear tests during thenegotiations, to discuss denuclearization and to raise no public objectionsto scheduled US-South Korean military exercises.
What comes next is unclear.
Deputy press secretary Raj Shah would not rule out a White House summit orTrump going to North Korea for the talks, although he said on ABC’s “ThisWeek” that the latter venue was not “highly likely.”
Pompeo said “channels are open” but he shed no light on how the UnitedStates will proceed or even whether it has heard back from the NorthKoreans on Trump’s agreement to talk to Kim.
Two key Trump advisers were out of the country, US Secretary of State RexTillerson being in Africa and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Oman.
Neither Tillerson, Mattis nor National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hascommented substantively on the North Korea talks.
– ‘Potential for misunderstanding’ –
“I do not want to talk about Korea at all. I will leave it to those who areleading the effort,” Mattis told reporters during a flight to Oman,”because it?s that delicate, when you get into a position like this.”
“The potential for misunderstanding remains very high or goes higher.”
Pompeo said there wasn’t “any doubt about who is going to take the lead onthis.”
“The president of the United States is going to take the lead,” he said onCBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Trump reached out to the leaders of China and Japan in phone calls Friday,and later said he had received encouragement for the diplomatic gambit.
He tweeted that Chinese President Xi Jinping “appreciates that the U.S. isworking to solve the problem diplomatically rather than going with theominous alternative. China continues to be helpful!”
He described Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as “very enthusiastic.”
A White House readout of the conversation with Xi said the two leaderscommitted to keeping the pressure on North Korea until it takes “tangiblesteps toward complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.” -Agencies