Negotiators will also need to secure a commitment from the secretive state to halt production of nuclear material for more bombs, an assessment by the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) said. Next week’s high-stakes summit in Vietnam will see Mr Trump meet with dictator Kim for the second time as Washington seeks to neutralise the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea. But while the US should prepare for Pyongyang to act in good faith, officials must also be ready to ramp up the pressure if the hermit kingdom drags its feet, CNAS warned.

The research, entitled ‘Negotiating With North Korea: How Will This End?’ says the unpredictable nature of Kim's regime means the Trump administration should prepare for the best but also plan for the worst. It warned that while Pyongyang may publicly agree to work towards disarming, it could secretly “use this period of diplomacy to strengthen its nuclear and missile programmes”. In this case, the US must be “be prepared to revert to a robust policy of deterrence and containment”. Last year’s summit in Singapore was hailed a success by President Trump, who left the talks and declared the secretive state no longer posed a threat.

The two leaders agreed to work towards denuclearisation but the wording of a joint declaration was vague and lacked any real commitments. Meanwhile, experts warned the US had secured nothing concrete from the talks while North Korea had won a halt to some US-South Korean military drills after Mr Trump announced he would be suspending them in a post-summit news conference. Next week’s highly-anticipated talks in Hanoi are likely to end in only one of two ways, according to CNAS: either Pyongyang agrees to work towards denuclearisation or “frustrations over the lack of progress will effectively terminate the United States’ diplomatic opening with the Kim regime”. For the Trump administration to claim a breakthrough, negotiators would need to secure at least a partial declaration from North Korea over how many and what type of nuclear weapons it has, according to CNAS.

Pyongyang would also need to reveal how many ballistic missiles are stockpiled, though the study acknowledged these inventories could take up to two years to pry out of the Kim regime. Meanwhile, the US should attempt to persuade North Korea to allow international inspectors to enter the country to verify its claims. But CNAS warned the US must also prepare to act if the Kim regime decides to renege on any commitments or deliberately obstructs the process. To this end, the US and Japan should bolster its military readiness and improve missile defence, the study said.</s>Trump and Kim will meet next week in Hanoi for their second summit, and it appears that the administration still doesn’t understand that North Korean disarmament isn’t going to happen:

North Korea isn’t going to give up its arsenal, and it is very unlikely to make any concessions if the administration insists on a “rapid” pace. The administration needs to face up to the reality that North Korean disarmament isn’t happening. If it doesn’t, it will waste its opportunity to negotiate with North Korea on more limited, achievable goals of capping and possibly reducing their arsenal. Unfortunately, because Bolton is dead-set against anything short of North Korea’s capitulation it is not very likely that the administration will settle for a modest arms control agreement.

There could be some progress on non-nuclear issues at the summit, but there is intense resistance inside the administration to going that route. There is sharp disagreement between the administration’s envoy, Stephen Biegun, and the hard-liners in the administration that are opposed to any realistic agreement:

Hawks such as Bolton have fiercely opposed this “step-by-step” process in favor of maintaining maximum pressure through economic sanctions that would, in theory, force a better deal by eroding North Korea’s resolve. Bolton has fretted privately that Biegun’s team is too eager for a deal, and he continues to believe the negotiations will fail, according to people familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the tensions within the administration.

Bolton has never wanted successful diplomacy with North Korea, so of course he is against doing anything that might have a chance of succeeding. “Maximum pressure” wasn’t what brought North Korea to the table, and it isn’t going to “force a better deal.” In fact, the longer that the U.S. relies on sanctions to try to force North Korea into bigger concessions, the less incentive North Korea has to agree to anything. Kim can see as well as anyone else how quickly and arbitrarily the U.S. backtracks on promises of sanctions relief. Why would North Korea put itself in the position of complying with an agreement only to have sanctions relief ripped away a year or two later? Even if North Korea made and honored real commitments to the U.S., it could not count on this administration to keep its side of the bargain.

Unless the administration gives up on the fantasy of disarming North Korea, none of these summit meetings is going to be very productive. The Trump administration remains fixated on the wrong thing, and its all-or-nothing approach to diplomacy pretty much guarantees that it will once again come away with nothing.</s>President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for the second time next week at a summit in Vietnam, the continuation of their conversation about North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson talks with CNN international correspondent Will Ripley (@willripley), who covered the first meeting last year in Singapore and will be in Hanoi for the second summit.</s>At the Hanoi Summit, Trump Should Hold Himself to His Own Standards

President Donald Trump will have to rely heavily on his personal deal-making skills to get through his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, set for Feb. 27 and 28 in Hanoi. That’s exactly what Kim is hoping for.

The format will be similar to the summit held in Singapore last June, with plenty of one-on-one time for the president and supreme leader. That suits Kim just fine. All indications are that the North Koreans are denying the U.S. negotiators any specific written commitments going into Hanoi because they know that capable U.S. State Department officials will insist on concrete and verifiable measures. Because Trump wants the summit with Kim regardless of the actual status of the negotiations over denuclearization, the State Department negotiators are probably going into the summit knowing only slightly more about the likely outcome than the rest of us.

It is a fair guess, though, that the most probable outcome is some variation on the status quo. The Trump administration has dropped demands for a declaration of North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities that would be the necessary precursor for an actual denuclearization process. Kim might agree to allow inspectors into the satellite and nuclear test facilities the North has already decommissioned or let inspectors back into the facilities in Yongbyon (for the third time), but these steps would be more symbolic than substantive. Somewhat more significant would be the North giving broader access to its newer uranium enrichment facilities in Yongbyon, but even that would add only limited insights to what Washington already knows. In exchange, Pyongyang would demand significant sanctions rollbacks and a formal declaration ending the Korean War. (Trump is clearly attracted to the latter proposition.) In other words, the core agreement would remain unchanged from the one going into the Singapore summit: a freeze-for-freeze in which North Korea refrains from nuclear and missile tests and the United States continues its halt on military exercises with South Korea—which Trump announced unilaterally in Singapore without consulting South Korea, Japan, or his own Defense Department.

Trump and members of his administration continue to trumpet this as a major accomplishment. This week, Trump told reporters, “There’s no testing. As long as there is no testing, I’m in no rush.” But a freeze-for-freeze is exactly what the Trump administration once swore it would not accept. In September 2017, Nikki Haley, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called the Sino-Russian freeze-for-freeze proposal “insulting,” and the previous month State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said there was “no equivalency” between U.S. exercises and North Korean testing. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it best in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 25, 2018, when he said:

The widely discussed “freeze for freeze” scheme—halting North Korean missile tests in return for abandoning defined Allied military exercises—will not … fulfill this purpose or even advance it. That would equate legitimate security operations with activities which have been condemned by the UN Security Council for decades. And it would encourage demands for additional restraints on, and perhaps the dismantling of, America’s alliances in the region. In its ultimate sense, a freeze would legitimize North Korea’s nuclear establishment as well as the results of its previous tests.

The self-imposed military exercise freeze will almost certainly continue after the Hanoi summit, and that could be compounded by a declaration officially ending the Korean War—which would not mean much. The United States should give diplomacy a chance, but Congress and the media should hold Trump to the standards his administration already set.</s>Although North Korea has suspended all its nuclear and missile tests during its negotiations with Washington, it has yet to start denuclearization.

Mr. Trump is expected to use his Hanoi summit meeting to push for a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, as well as a “road map” for ridding the country of all its nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, according to United States officials. Mr. Trump also seeks to ensure that both sides have a “shared understanding” of what they mean by the “complete denuclearization of Korean Peninsula.”

In the past, North Korea had indicated that it would be willing to denuclearize only when the United States removed American troops from South Korea, as well as keeping long-range bombers and other nuclear-capable military assets from the peninsula. But officials from both the United States and South Korea insist that their countries’ alliance should not be on the negotiating table between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim.

“The United States and partners are prepared to explore how to mobilize investment, improve infrastructure, enhance food security, and more in the D.P.R.K.,” the White House said in a statement this past week, using an abbreviation of the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “Robust economic development under Chairman Kim is at the core of President Trump’s vision for a bright future for United States-D.P.R.K. relations.”

The White House said North Korea had also “committed to the dismantlement of plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities.”

Officials from both countries are already in Hanoi negotiating the agenda, logistics and other details for the meeting, including what first steps toward denuclearization North Korea should take. North Korea has offered to dismantle its nuclear complex in Yongbyon, which houses plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities, but has said it would do so only when the United States took “corresponding” measures.

The scale of North Korea’s actions is likely to depend largely on whether Washington agrees to ease sanctions, according to South Korean officials familiar with the negotiations.

Mr. Kim’s efforts to rebuild the country’s economy have been hampered by a series of tough United Nations sanctions for which the Trump administration has campaigned. The sanctions seek to block key North Korean export items, such as coal and iron ore, as well as sharply limiting the North’s ability to import fuel.</s>Negotiators will also need to secure a commitment from the secretive state to halt production of nuclear material for more bombs, an assessment by the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) said. Next week’s high-stakes summit in Vietnam will see Mr Trump meet with dictator Kim for the second time as Washington seeks to neutralise the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea. But while the US should prepare for Pyongyang to act in good faith, officials must also be ready to ramp up the pressure if the hermit kingdom drags its feet, CNAS warned.

The research, entitled ‘Negotiating With North Korea: How Will This End?’ says the unpredictable nature of Kim's regime means the Trump administration should prepare for the best but also plan for the worst. It warned that while Pyongyang may publicly agree to work towards disarming, it could secretly “use this period of diplomacy to strengthen its nuclear and missile programmes”. In this case, the US must be “be prepared to revert to a robust policy of deterrence and containment”. Last year’s summit in Singapore was hailed a success by President Trump, who left the talks and declared the secretive state no longer posed a threat.

The two leaders agreed to work towards denuclearisation but the wording of a joint declaration was vague and lacked any real commitments. Meanwhile, experts warned the US had secured nothing concrete from the talks while North Korea had won a halt to some US-South Korean military drills after Mr Trump announced he would be suspending them in a post-summit news conference. Next week’s highly-anticipated talks in Hanoi are likely to end in only one of two ways, according to CNAS: either Pyongyang agrees to work towards denuclearisation or “frustrations over the lack of progress will effectively terminate the United States’ diplomatic opening with the Kim regime”. For the Trump administration to claim a breakthrough, negotiators would need to secure at least a partial declaration from North Korea over how many and what type of nuclear weapons it has, according to CNAS.

Pyongyang would also need to reveal how many ballistic missiles are stockpiled, though the study acknowledged these inventories could take up to two years to pry out of the Kim regime. Meanwhile, the US should attempt to persuade North Korea to allow international inspectors to enter the country to verify its claims. But CNAS warned the US must also prepare to act if the Kim regime decides to renege on any commitments or deliberately obstructs the process. To this end, the US and Japan should bolster its military readiness and improve missile defence, the study said.</s>After last year's visually striking summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, President Trump heralded it as a success and even claimed North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat.

Eight months later, however, experts believe North Korea has failed to show tangible steps toward denuclearization and the Pentagon has said that North Korea still poses an "extraordinary threat" to the United States and its allies. As Mr. Trump prepares for his second summit with the North Korean strongman, this time in Hanoi, Vietnam, it remains to be seen whether this summit will yield significant steps towards denuclearization, or yield similar results as last year's meeting.

Meanwhile, the White House has yet to lay out specific goals of the summit, other than continued progress towards denuclearization. And some experts warn that if this summit produces as few tangible outcomes on denuclearization as the last, that could do more harm than good.

If Mr. Trump's second summit with Kim doesn't produce more concrete commitments from North Korea than the first one did, the U.S. could risk triggering a proliferation race among East Asian powers, Korea expert Sue Mi Terry told CBS News' Intelligence Matters podcast this week.

"North Korea, without really having done anything, they look more legitimate. Kim Jong Un looks more legitimate," Terry added.

Bruce Klingener, a senior research fellow on Northeast Asia with the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote that "much is riding on the outcome of the next Trump-Kim summit. The second summit must not repeat the mistakes of the first. It must have substance rather than simply the pomp and circumstance of the first."

"There has been no tangible progress on North Korean denuclearization," Klingener continued. "Pyongyang continues its nuclear and missile programs unabated, and there has been no degradation of the multi-faceted North Korean threat to the United States and its allies. The U.S. is now risking a second summit with North Korea without first insisting on fleshing out the bare bones of the Singapore summit statement. There are concerns in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo that President Trump may agree to several North Korean proposals that appear beneficial but contain hidden perils."

The statement Mr. Trump and Kim signed last year reaffirmed a declaration that the "DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." But in December, national security adviser John Bolton suggested the president believes a second summit would be productive precisely because Kim hasn't lived up to his commitments, not because he has.

"They have not lived up to the commitments so far," Bolton said during The Wall Street Journal's annual CEO Council conference in D.C. "That's why I think the president thinks that another summit is likely to be productive."

The U.S. is entering summit with few publicly explained goals, and Trump administration officials have struggled to identify tangible progress on denuclearization, or even the process of defining what that is. Senior administration officials on a call with reporters earlier this week admitted that the U.S. and North Korea still don't share a defined definition of denuclearization, months after the first summit. One of the expectations for the Vietnam summit, a senior administration official told reporters, is reaching a "shared understanding of what denuclearization is."
• None North Korea says "no way" it will disarm nuclear weapons if it can't trust U.S.

When asked what specific goals the White House has for the summit, top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway pointed to making progress on denuclearization and to past non-nuclear related diplomatic steps with North Korea.

"The president's made very clear that he wants to have a second meeting of its kind as a way to continue to move towards denuclearization in the Korean Peninsula which benefits everyone," Conway said. "And of course it was President Obama who told President Trump, North Korea will be your greatest challenge."

"So he's trying to tackle that challenge, we're way ahead already," Conway added. "We have the detainees back on American soil. The vice president went to Hawaii to receive the remains of some of our fallen from the Korean War. To try to end the war of nearly seven decades in Korea and get on our way to denuclearization is a very, very important goal and that's why the president is going over for a second time, traveling quite a distance, toward that end. But in the meantime the sanctions remain."

Publicly, the White House isn't setting high hopes for this second summit. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News on Friday that the only ones setting "high expectations" for the summit are the media because journalists are looking for reasons to attack the president.

"I think that the only one setting high expectations is probably the media because they're looking for reasons to attack this president," Sanders told Fox News Friday. "They hate the idea that he's done so well on something his predecessors couldn't do anything on."

Asked following that comment if the White House does not have high expectations for the summit, Sanders told CBS News the U.S. is "continuing to see positive progress," but that "we're not going to be naïve in the process."</s>President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet one-on-one at the start of their summit next week in Hanoi, a senior administration official said on Thursday.

The initial session will be followed by a meal and expanded talks with each country’s delegation.

“President Trump is looking to, after really in some respects breaking the ice in June, to talk in more depth about the kind of future North Korea could enjoy if it follows through on its commitment to final and full denuclearization,” a senior administration official said.

Trump is hoping to advance four priorities in his summit meeting with Kim next week in Hanoi, a senior administration official said on Thursday.

The priorities include: transforming relations between the US and North Korea; establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula; the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; and the return of killed-in-action and missing-in-action Americans from the Korean War.

Senior US officials are in Hanoi now negotiating with a North Korean delegation ahead of the summit.

“Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to,” one official said. “We will be closely engaged with the North Korean delegation right up until the President arrives for the summit next week.”

A withdrawal of US troops from South Korea is not under consideration ahead of Trump’s summit next week with Kim, a senior administration official says.

The matter “is not the subject of discussions” with the North Koreans, the official said.

A second official said a troop withdrawal “is not really an operative subject right now.”</s>Next week, Vietnam will welcome North Korea’s Kim Jong Un ahead of his second summit with President Trump. If the previous summit in Singapore is anything to go by, Kim will be treated lavishly by his hosts — staying in top hotels and receiving VIP tours of commercial areas.

But as Kim is feted in Hanoi, a Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating his half brother at Kuala Lumpur International Airport just over two years ago faces a potential death penalty in Malaysia.

Doan Thi Huong, 30, is accused of delivering the potent VX nerve agent that killed Kim Jong Nam in February 2017. U.S. officials have said the orders came from Pyongyang.

“There is zero percent chance that Kim Jong Un didn’t order the assassination of his brother himself,” said Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former CIA analyst.

Huong and her co-defendant say they thought they were taking part in a prank television show. Whether that is true, they were not the ones with the motivation to kill Kim Jong Nam, Terry said. “They were just used."

The charges that Huong faces carry an automatic death penalty, though the new Malaysian government has suggested that it will move to abolish capital punishment.

The contrast between the warm welcome given to Kim Jong Un in Vietnam and the harsh future that lies ahead of Huong shows how complicated diplomacy with North Korea can be — and how repercussions for North Korean abuses and exploitation may fall by the wayside as the world tries to realign its relationship with Kim Jong Un for the better.

In Hanoi, Huong is little mentioned, but the North Korean leader is everywhere. Kim haircuts are being offered ahead of the North Korean leader’s arrival; you can order a “Kim Jong Ale” specially brewed for the summit. Even Huong’s parents have said that they welcome the summit, telling Japanese reporters that they had hopes that Kim could “save their daughter."

Andrew Yeo, a professor at Catholic University who tracks North Korean human rights issues, said it was ironic that the Vietnamese government was “willing to roll out the red carpet for Kim,” even though Kim’s regime embroiled a Vietnamese national in an international murder plot.

Although Vietnam is often taken as a model for North Korea, Yeo said, the country also has its human rights problems. “The 'Vietnamese model’ also signals to Kim that economic development and investment are possible without necessarily improving its human rights record,” he added.

Huong is awaiting the conclusion of her trial in Malaysia. She grew up in Nghia Binh, Vietnam, not far from Hanoi, and is thought to have been recruited by North Korean agents while working at a bar in the Vietnamese capital. She flew to Kuala Lumpur a week before Kim Jong Nam’s slaying on Feb. 13, 2017.

Security footage from the airport would later show Huong — wearing a distinctive “LOL” shirt — and a 25-year-old Indonesian woman called Siti Aisyah smearing a nerve agent over the face of Kim Jong Nam before running away. Kim Jong Nam collapsed as he sought medical attention; he later died as he was being transported to a hospital.

The eldest son of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the 45-year-old had once been groomed to take over the country himself. He had been living in the Chinese province of Macau since 2003 and his sometimes critical stance, as well as his bloodline, made him a potential threat to his brother.

Huong and Siti are the only two people on trial for Kim Jong Nam’s killing. Both have pleaded not guilty; their trial has been extended due to the large number of witnesses and is likely to drag on until at least mid-2019. Investigators do not believe they acted alone: Malaysian officials identified four men at the airport who were probably North Korean agents, but all fled the country shortly after the attack.

North Korea has denied involvement. The already isolated nation found its diplomatic relations with Southeast Asia strained after the killing, with Malaysia expelling Pyongyang’s ambassador and canceling visa-free entry for North Koreans. But tensions have gradually improved since the Singapore summit last year: Kuala Lumpur announcing that it would reopen its embassy in Pyongyang and move to end the diplomatic row.

Although Huong’s case drew condemnation from Vietnam at the time, it too has been overshadowed by new diplomatic ventures. South Korean media reported late last year that North Korean officials had informally offered regret for involving a Vietnamese citizen in the killing of Kim Jong Nam.

Josh Kurlantzick, a fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that many in Vietnam probably knew little about Huong’s case and that the government was unlikely to draw attention to it, due to its own use of the death penalty and pursuit of critics internationally. “The government doesn’t want to highlight this case,” Kurlantzick said.

Though Trump once used human rights abuses as a tool to criticize North Korea, his administration largely abandoned the policy last year. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has suggested that Vietnam may be a model for North Korea’s economic and diplomatic reforms, arguing that the “miracle” seen in the country could be replicated in North Korea.

“If Vietnam serves as any example for the path North Korea should head in, then we should be very concerned about the future state of human rights in the Korean Peninsula,” said Francisco Benscosme, Asia Pacific advocacy manager at Amnesty International.

Kelly said there’s little chance that Trump will bring up broader human rights issues when he meets with Kim in Vietnam, and even less that he will bring up the assassination of Kim Jong Nam.

“He doesn’t care,” she added, of Kim Jong Un’s thoughts about Huong. “We’re talking about a man who assassinated his brother.”

Why North Korea called John Bolton ‘human scum and a bloodsucker’ in 2003

Did you hear the one about the North Korean leader, the $100 bill and the trump card?

North Korean insults to U.S. leaders are nothing new — but Trump’s deeply personal reactions are</s>A Hanoi barber is offering haircuts to help you look like the two leaders ahead of the summit next week.
The Trump administration weighs softening demands ahead of the second summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi.