FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Historic Break: Donald Trump Agrees To Meet Kim Jong-un by May
March 8, 2018 (EIRNS)—In a truly historic move, President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to meet “by May.” After a full day of meetings in the White House between South Korea’s National Security Chief Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service director Suh Hoon, with President Trump and his National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and others, Chung and Suh stepped out of the White House at 7:15 this evening to brief the press on what Trump had earlier announced would be a major development.
Indeed, Chung repeated the breakthroughs which had been achieved last week in the meetings in Pyongyang between himself and Suh with Kim Jong-un and other North Korean leaders—namely, plans for a summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in—but then reported that Kim had also issued an invitation to President Trump for a personal meeting, and that Trump has accepted the invitation, to be held “by May.”
Chung Eui-yong thanked Trump and McMaster, saying that Trump’s leadership through his “maximum pressure” policy, together with international cooperation, had led to the decision by Kim Jong-un to agree to a denuclearization process, based on achieving assurances for North Korean security. Kim has agreed to suspend testing of weapons and missiles while negotiations proceed, and understands that the military exercises between the South and the U.S. need to continue, Chung said.
China’s CGTN television network reported that the meeting in Pyongyang was the first time a South Korean official had been allowed into the North’s central government headquarters, and the planned meeting between Kim and Moon on the South side of the DMZ will be the first-ever visit by a North Korean leader to South Korea. Trump will also be the first U.S. President to meet a North Korean leader.
The time for the Moon-Kim summit, and the time and place for the Trump-Kim summit, have not been determined.
