Kim prepared to cede nuclear weapons if U.S. Pledges not to invade

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April 29, 2018 7:18 PM

SEOUL, South Korea — Keeping diplomatic developments coming at a head-snapping pace, the South Korean government said Sunday that North Korea’s leader.

In a confidence-building gesture before a proposed summit meeting with President Donald Trump, Kim also said he would invite experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States to watch the shutdown next month of his country’s only known underground nuclear test site.

In Washington, Trump officials spoke cautiously about the chances of reaching a deal and laid out a plan for the rapid dismantling of the North’s nuclear program, perhaps over a two-year period.

That would be accompanied by a “full, complete, total disclosure of everything related to their nuclear program with a full international verification,” said John R. Bolton, Trump’s new national security adviser.

The apparent concessions from the youthful leader were widely welcomed as perhaps the most promising signs yet of ending a standoff on the Korean Peninsula frozen in place since fighting in the Korean War ended 65 years ago.

But skeptics warned that North Korea previously made similar pledges of denuclearization on numerous occasions, with little or no intention of abiding by them.

A South Korean government spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, provided details of a summit meeting the two Korean heads of state held Friday.

“I know the Americans are inherently disposed against us, but when they talk with us, they will see that I am not the kind of person who would shoot nuclear weapons to the south, over the Pacific or at the United States,” Kim told Moon, according to Yoon’s account.

Kim’s apparent willingness to negotiate away his nuclear arsenal was revealed just as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke for the first time about a “good conversation” he had with Kim during his secret visit to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, over Easter weekend.

Pompeo told ABC News in a broadcast Sunday that the Trump administration’s objective was “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization” with North Korea, and that Kim was prepared to “lay out a map that would help us achieve” denuclearization.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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