North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has extended an invitation to Donald Trump for talks. That invitation has been accepted and signals the next chapter in the complicated relationship between the United States and North Korea.

As teased by Trump earlier in the day, South Korea’s national security advisor Chung Eui-yong appeared outside the White House to announce the planned meeting. The Washington Post reports that Chung indicated Kim will not be engaging in nuclear and missile testing in the period ahead of this interaction.

“[Kim Jong Un] expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” said Chung. “President Trump said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May.”

The planned meeting comes as the Trump presidency has been liberal with taunts and threats of nuclear action against North Korea with the two leaders frequently engaging in strongman rhetoric while clashing foreign relations swords.

“I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture,” offered Chung.

The White House released a statement shortly after the announcement confirming the talks.

He will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain.”

Naturally, a tweet quickly emerged from Trump as well.

“Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean representatives, not just a freeze,” he tweeted. “Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!”

Even if discussions of sanctions and nuclear weapons fall through, Trump and Kim always have the opportunity to fall back on comparing notes on military parades.</s>President Trump certainly has a flair for the dramatic.

The announcement Thursday night that the president of the United States had accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un shocked the world.

That is the kind of phrase that is overused — in politics and sports, in particular — but it's appropriate in this case.

"This is quite extraordinary," former U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered on Thursday night. Hill represented the U.S. in multilateral talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration.

Extraordinary because no other sitting U.S. president has met with a North Korean leader. (Jimmy Carter met with then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1994 as a former president, and former President Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong Il in 2009 to negotiate the release of two journalists.)

Extraordinary because the rhetoric between the countries has been heated in recent months with Trump referring to Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and a "madman," and Kim referring to Trump as a "lunatic" and "loser."

Extraordinary because few thought this realistically could happen. Trump has said in the past that he would be open to meeting with Kim, but on Tuesday, when asked about the possibility, he was noncommittal. "We're going to see what happens," he said.

The surprise nature of the announcement gave the impression of an ad hoc gambit rather than a careful, well-thought-out approach to dealing with an unpredictable nuclear regime.

In diplomacy, it comes with incredible risk to subject a principal to a one-on-one meeting where results aren't guaranteed — or at least close. Typically, spade work is done by lower-level experts for months, if not years.

Trump is banking on the power of his personality for a breakthrough. But some recent domestic examples provide little evidence Trump will deal with this particularly thorny issue masterfully.

After Trump's televised meetings on immigration and guns, participants were left confused. Instead of command performances, there was disorganization and a lack of policy depth.

What's more, the Trump administration's stance on North Korea has been something of a whiplash. Washington, with Trump's backing, has pushed for ramping up sanctions against Pyongyang. And the White House reportedly scoffed at the State Department's special envoy who tried to pursue direct talks late last year.

"He's such a dreamer," one White House official told Reuters sarcastically of State's point man on North Korea, Joseph Yun.

Seemingly out of frustration with a lack of effort at pursuing direct diplomacy and a peaceful solution, Yun retired — just last week.

When it comes to an issue as dangerous and delicate as North Korea, this isn't how it's normally done. At the same time, Trump's theory of everything is that the way it has always been done hasn't worked, so let's try something else.

That high-risk, high-reward approach has its skeptics, but not everyone is dismissing it out of hand.

"We were quickly heading down the road to a possible military confrontation with the North Koreans and a major step toward diplomacy is a most welcome turn of events," Suzanne DiMaggio, senior fellow at the think tank New America, said on NPR's Morning Edition on Friday.

Hill, the former U.S. negotiator on North Korea, said Trump's out-of-the-box stance may very well have been what spurred this.

"Frankly, he may be right about some of this, because it was pretty clear that the U.S. was kind of going relentlessly on this issue," Hill said on All Things Considered. "And he's such a — how to put it — different kind of president that — he seemed to be prepared to talk about things that other presidents have not been prepared to talk about.

"For example, in Washington the last few weeks, there's been a discussion about the so-called bloody nose and the idea that somehow we could launch some kind of strike against the North Koreans," he added. "So it could be that this kind of attitude unconstrained by what anyone in the past has done kind of gave the North Koreans pause."

DiMaggio and others said preparation and expectations-setting are going to prove important. In particular, the president should stop raising the bar for the possibility that the North will give up its nuclear program entirely, like the White House and the president did Thursday.

"We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. "In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain."

The president then tweeted that Kim "talked about denuclearization ... not just a freeze."

"We need to go into the mindset that this is going to be a long, arduous process," DiMaggio said. "The North Koreans are not going to give up their nuclear program anytime soon. They may well never give it up. ... We need to really get in place the priorities that we want to achieve in the near term."

But the expectations horse may have already left the barn. Here was Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner on NPR's Morning Edition: "If the president of the United States meets with Kim Jong Un and does not walk away with what should be those concrete steps toward denuclearization, then I don't see how it's any closer to the kind of peace on the peninsula that we have been seeking."

Hill cautioned against that mindset, saying there needs to be other attainable goals on the table. "It's important to get down all the steps with the last one being complete denuclearization," he said.

"I don't think we're going to get an absolute goal of denuclearization," Bill Richardson, a Democrat and former ambassador to the United Nations who has been to North Korea eight times, said on CNN on Friday. "I think the president needs to temper that."

"Risks need to be mitigated by very good staff work"

Preparation is key, experts agree, but the staffing situation in the White House and at the State Department makes observers nervous.

"What's important," Hill said, "is the U.S. has some clear understanding of what goes forward, because a presidential meeting is kind of coin of the realm, and the idea that we are just going to have a pause in their testing without really concrete understandings of what goes forward — that's risky, and those risks need to be mitigated by very good staff work."

When it comes to that staff work, there are some danger signs. Diplomatic experts have been sidelined in this administration. As NPR diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen points out, there is a thin bench at the State Department currently when it comes to dealing with North Korea — not only did Yun retire, someone who joined the Foreign Service in 1985, but there is also no assistant secretary of state for East Asia (she's currently going through her confirmation process). Trump still hasn't nominated an ambassador to South Korea.

A career diplomat is currently serving in that role, which can be a good thing, but all of it points to unsteadiness and inconsistency at the staff level, and in talks with a rogue regime, one false move can have massive ripple effects and unintended consequences.

What's more, when the announcement came down, it was the deputy secretary of state at the White House, not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He is currently in Africa. He said this was not a "surprise," but he also signaled that Trump made the decision on his own.

This was "a decision the President took himself," Tillerson said, per CNN, in Djibouti, a day after Tillerson questioned "whether conditions are right" for negotiations.

"We're a long way from negotiations," Tillerson said in Ethiopia on Thursday. "We just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it. I don't know yet, until we are able to meet ourselves face to face with representatives of North Korea, whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations."

On Friday, though, Tillerson was put in the position of trying to walk a very fine line between the words "negotiations" and "talks."

"With respect to talks with North Korea versus negotiations," he said, "and I think this seems to be something that people continue to struggle with the difference — my comments have been that the conditions are not right for negotiations."

Can Trump stick to the script?

Either way, talks or negotiations with North Korea are high stakes, especially when the president is involved. And this president, in particular, has had trouble sticking to the script.

"His primary problem is sticking to talking points and really laying the kind of groundwork that has to be laid for the kind of serious negotiations that are going to take place," former Obama Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta told CNN.

"It's risky," Richardson said. "We've got to be properly prepared, and we cannot underestimate Kim Jong Un. He's evolving into a strategic thinker, into a man with an endgame."

To that point, congressional Republicans are sharpening their sabers.

"I do believe that North Korea now believes President Trump will use military force if he has to," South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement. "A word of warning to North Korean President Kim Jong Un — the worst possible thing you can do is meet with President Trump in person and try to play him. If you do that, it will be the end of you — and your regime."

Still, while Trump's agreeing to a meeting surprised almost everyone and didn't relieve skepticism, experts welcomed the news.

"This is a positive step," Panetta said. "The world is breathing a sigh of relief as a result of having these negotiations, even having this kind of meeting."

But they warned about something else: "One of the first priorities is going to have to be how to soundproof this process from President Trump's tweets and rants," DiMaggio said, "otherwise we are going to be in for a rocky road ahead."

Or, as Richardson put it: "I think this is big stakes, a big gamble, but I'm supporting the president's effort to do it. Just be careful and don't tweet. Don't tweet. Just stay low."</s>caption President Donald Trump. source REUTERS/Leah Millis

The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Friday that certain conditions would need to be met before President Donald Trump would sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Sanders said Trump would take the meeting only “on the basis that we have concrete and verifiable steps” toward the denuclearization of North Korea.

Trump agreed to meet with Kim in the next two months, South Korea’s national security adviser said on Thursday.

The White House said on Friday that certain conditions would need to be met before President Donald Trump would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“The president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions take place by North Korea,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. “So the president would actually be getting something.”

She said later in the briefing that Trump would take the meeting only “on the basis that we have concrete and verifiable steps” toward the denuclearization of North Korea.

South Korea’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, said at the White House on Thursday that Trump had agreed to “meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”

Sanders said that neither a date nor a location had been determined for a meeting, to which Trump seems to have already committed.

The White House’s reaction had North Korea observers questioning whether the meeting would even take place.

“If they’re this uncomfortable talking about a prospective summit, it probably means it won’t happen by May and may not even happen at all,” Ankit Panda, a senior editor at The Diplomat, wrote on Twitter.

Other US officials have pushed back on Sanders’ comments.

“The invitation has been extended and accepted, and that stands,” an unidentified White House official told a Wall Street Journal reporter.</s>President Trump certainly has a flair for the dramatic.

The announcement Thursday night that the president of the United States had accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un shocked the world.

That is the kind of phrase that is overused — in politics and sports, in particular — but it's appropriate in this case.

"This is quite extraordinary," former U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered on Thursday night. Hill represented the U.S. in multilateral talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration.

Extraordinary because no other sitting U.S. presidents has met with a North Korean leader. (Jimmy Carter met with then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1994 as a former president, and former President Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong Il in 2009 to negotiate the release of two journalists.)

Extraordinary because the rhetoric between the countries has been heated in recent months with Trump referring to Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and a "madman," and Kim referring to Trump as a "lunatic" and "loser."

Extraordinary because few thought this realistically could happen. Trump has said in the past that he would be open to meeting with Kim, but on Tuesday when asked about the possibility, he was noncommittal. "We're going to see what happens," he said.

The surprise nature of the announcement gave the impression of an ad hoc gambit rather than a careful, well-thought-out approach to dealing with an unpredictable nuclear regime.

In diplomacy, it comes with incredible risk to subject a principal to a one-on-one meeting where results aren't guaranteed — or at least close. Typically, spade work is done by lower-level experts for months, if not years.

Trump is banking on the power of his personality for a breakthrough. But some recent domestic examples provide little evidence Trump will deal with this particularly thorny issue masterfully.

After Trump's televised meetings on immigration and guns, participants were left confused. Instead of command performances, there was disorganization and a lack of policy depth.

What's more, the Trump administration's stance on North Korea has been something of a whiplash. Washington, with Trump's backing, has pushed for ramping up sanctions against Pyongyang. And the White House reportedly scoffed at the State Department's special envoy who tried to pursue direct talks late last year.

"He's such a dreamer," one White House official told Reuters sarcastically of State's point man on North Korea, Joseph Yun.

Seemingly out of frustration with a lack of effort at pursuing direct diplomacy and a peaceful solution, Yun retired — just last week.

When it comes to an issue as dangerous and delicate as North Korea, this isn't how it's normally done. At the same time, Trump's theory of everything is that the way it has always been done hasn't worked, so let's try something else.

That high-risk, high-reward approach has its skeptics, but not everyone is dismissing it out of hand.

"We were quickly heading down the road to a possible military confrontation with the North Koreans and a major step towards diplomacy is a most welcome turn of events," Suzanne DiMaggio, senior fellow at the think tank New America, said on NPR's Morning Edition on Friday.

Hill, the former U.S. negotiator on North Korea, said Trump's out-of-the-box stance may very well have been what spurred this.

"Frankly, he may be right about some of this, because it was pretty clear that the U.S. was kind of going relentlessly on this issue," Hill said on All Things Considered. "And he's such a — how to put it — different kind of president that — he seemed to be prepared to talk about things that other presidents have not been prepared to talk about.

"For example, in Washington the last few weeks, there's been a discussion about the so-called bloody nose and the idea that somehow we could launch some kind of strike against the North Koreans," he added. "So it could be that this kind of attitude unconstrained by what anyone in the past has done kind of gave the North Koreans pause."

DiMaggio and others said preparation and expectations-setting are going to prove important. In particular, the president should stop raising the bar for the possibility that the North will give up its nuclear program entirely, like the White House and the president did Thursday.

"We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. "In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain."

The president then tweeted that Kim "talked about denuclearization ... not just a freeze."

"We need to go into the mindset that this is going to be a long, arduous process," DiMaggio said. "The North Koreans are not going to give up their nuclear program anytime soon. They may well never give it up. ... We need to really get in place the priorities that we want to achieve in the near term."

But the expectations horse may have already left the barn. Here was Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner on NPR's Morning Edition: "If the president of the United States meets with Kim Jong Un and does not walk away with what should be those concrete steps towards denuclearization, then I don't see how it's any closer to the kind of peace on the peninsula that we have been seeking."

Hill cautioned against that mindset, saying there need to be other attainable goals on the table. "It's important to get down all the steps with the last one being complete denuclearization," he said.

"I don't think we're going to get an absolute goal of denuclearization," Bill Richardson, a Democrat and former ambassador to the United Nations who has been to North Korea eight times, said on CNN on Friday. "I think the president needs to temper that."

"Risks need to be mitigated by very good staff work"

Preparation is key, experts agree, but the staffing situation in the White House and at the State Department makes observers nervous.

"What's important," Hill said, "is the U.S. has some clear understanding of what goes forward, because a presidential meeting is kind of coin of the realm, and the idea that we are just going to have a pause in their testing without really concrete understandings of what goes forward — that's risky, and those risks need to be mitigated by very good staff work."

When it comes to that staff work, there are some danger signs. Diplomatic experts have been sidelined in this administration. As NPR diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen points out, there is a thin bench at the State Department currently when it comes to dealing with North Korea — not only did Yun retire, someone who joined the foreign service in 1985, but there is also no assistant secretary of state for East Asia (she's currently going through her confirmation process). Trump still hasn't nominated an ambassador to South Korea.

A career diplomat is currently serving in that role, which can be a good thing, but all of it points to unsteadiness and inconsistency at the staff level, and in talks with a rogue regime, one false move can have massive ripple effects and unintended consequences.

What's more, when the announcement came down, it was the deputy secretary of state at the White House, not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He is currently in Africa. He said this was not a "surprise," but he also signaled that Trump made the decision on his own.

This was "a decision the President took himself," Tillerson said, per CNN, in Djibouti, a day after Tillerson questioned "whether conditions are right" for negotiations.

"We're a long way from negotiations," Tillerson said in Ethiopia on Thursday. "We just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it. I don't know yet, until we are able to meet ourselves face to face with representatives of North Korea, whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations."

On Friday, though, Tillerson was put in the position of trying to walk a very fine line between the words "negotiations" and "talks."

"With respect to talks with North Korea versus negotiations," he said, "and I think this seems to be something that people continue to struggle with the difference — my comments have been that the conditions are not right for negotiations."

Can Trump stick to the script?

Either way, talks or negotiations with North Korea are high stakes, especially when the president is involved. And this president, in particular, has had trouble sticking to the script.

"His primary problem is sticking to talking points and really laying the kind of groundwork that has to be laid for the kind of serious negotiations that are going to take place," former Obama Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta told CNN.

"It's risky," Richardson said. "We've got to be properly prepared, and we cannot underestimate Kim Jong Un. He's evolving into a strategic thinker, into a man with an endgame."

To that point, congressional Republicans are sharpening their sabers.

"I do believe that North Korea now believes President Trump will use military force if he has to," South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement. "A word of warning to North Korean President Kim Jong Un — the worst possible thing you can do is meet with President Trump in person and try to play him. If you do that, it will be the end of you — and your regime."

Still, while Trump's agreeing to a meeting surprised almost everyone and didn't relieve skepticism, experts welcomed the news.

"This is a positive step," Panetta said. "The world is breathing a sigh of relief as a result of having these negotiations, even having this kind of meeting."

But they warned about something else: "One of the first priorities is going to have to be how to soundproof this process from President Trump's tweets and rants," DiMaggio said, "otherwise we are going to be in for a rocky road ahead."

Or, as Richardson put it: "I think this is big stakes, a big gamble, but I'm supporting the president's effort to do it. Just be careful and don't tweet. Don't tweet. Just stay low."</s>White House Says North Korea Meeting Will Happen Only With 'Concrete' Action

The White House appeared Friday to put conditions on a much anticipated meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying it would only happen once the rogue nation takes "concrete and verifiable action" to demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization.

"We've accepted the invitation to talk based on them following through on concrete actions on the promises they've made," Sanders said Friday.

The surprise announcement of a possible Trump-Kim summit came after the president met Thursday with South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong. Chung briefed the president about his recent meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

But less than 24 hours later, the White House appeared to hedge somewhat and call into question whether the meeting would ever come to fruition. Sanders appeared to add the condition that North Korea take tangible steps toward denuclearization before any meeting takes place. Last year, North Korea successfully tested its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

When pressed by reporters if that meant that the meeting might not happen after all, Sanders underscored that the onus was on North Korea. She emphasized that "nothing" had changed from the U.S. viewpoint and that Trump's "maximum pressure campaign" against North Korea would continue.

Sanders didn't outline the actions that would fulfill that denuclearization prerequisite, saying only that the national security and intelligence community would make those determinations. A time and place for the Trump-Kim meeting have not yet been set, although South Korea says it is expected by May.

As NPR's Elise Hu reported Thursday, "Any meeting between these two leaders would be historic. The U.S. has no diplomatic ties with North Korea; the countries are adversaries dating to the Korean War and repeatedly traded heated insults last year, including Trump's remarks at the United Nations, in which he vowed to 'totally destroy' North Korea if the U.S. was threatened."

Trump has also ribbed Kim on social media frequently, only heightening global tensions. Trump often referred to Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and bragged on Twitter that his nuclear button in the U.S. is bigger than the North Korean leader's.

Sanders also denied that the Thursday announcement had been haphazard in any way or that key foreign policy officials had been left out. Hours before the announcement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had declared that the U.S. is "a long ways from negotiations" with North Korea. But Tillerson, who is traveling in Africa, later emphasized a distinction between formal negotiations and what he called "talks."

Sanders also pushed back on the reports that national security adviser H.R. McMaster could be on his way out and said she had no reason to believe that McMaster wouldn't be a part of the upcoming North Korea talks. Sanders called the three-star Army general a "valued member" of the Trump administration.

"Look, the president has an incredible team that is surrounding him," Sanders said. "But at the end of the day, the ultimate person to lead that negotiation or that conversation and be at the table will be the president."</s>White House Says North Korea Meeting Will Happen Only With 'Concrete' Action

The White House appeared Friday to put conditions on a much anticipated meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying it would only happen once the rogue nation takes "concrete and verifiable action" to demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization.

"We've accepted the invitation to talk based on them following through on concrete actions on the promises they've made," Sanders said Friday.

Later in the day, Trump himself tweeted out that there was, indeed, a deal "very much in the making."

The surprise announcement of a possible Trump-Kim summit came after the president met Thursday with South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong. Chung briefed the president about his recent meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

But less than 24 hours later, the White House appeared to hedge somewhat and call into question whether the meeting would ever come to fruition. Sanders appeared to add the condition that North Korea take tangible steps toward denuclearization before any meeting takes place. Last year, North Korea successfully tested its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

When pressed by reporters if that meant that the meeting might not happen after all, Sanders underscored that the onus was on North Korea. She emphasized that "nothing" had changed from the U.S. viewpoint and that Trump's "maximum pressure campaign" against North Korea would continue.

Sanders didn't outline the actions that would fulfill that denuclearization prerequisite, saying only that the national security and intelligence community would make those determinations. A time and place for the Trump-Kim meeting have not yet been set, although South Korea says it is expected by May.

As NPR's Elise Hu reported Thursday, "Any meeting between these two leaders would be historic. The U.S. has no diplomatic ties with North Korea; the countries are adversaries dating to the Korean War and repeatedly traded heated insults last year, including Trump's remarks at the United Nations, in which he vowed to 'totally destroy' North Korea if the U.S. was threatened."

Trump has also ribbed Kim on social media frequently, only heightening global tensions. Trump often referred to Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and bragged on Twitter that his nuclear button in the U.S. is bigger than the North Korean leader's.

Sanders also denied that the Thursday announcement had been haphazard in any way or that key foreign policy officials had been left out. Hours before the announcement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had declared that the U.S. is "a long ways from negotiations" with North Korea. But Tillerson, who is traveling in Africa, later emphasized a distinction between formal negotiations and what he called "talks."

Sanders also pushed back on the reports that national security adviser H.R. McMaster could be on his way out and said she had no reason to believe that McMaster wouldn't be a part of the upcoming North Korea talks. Sanders called the three-star Army general a "valued member" of the Trump administration.

"Look, the president has an incredible team that is surrounding him," Sanders said. "But at the end of the day, the ultimate person to lead that negotiation or that conversation and be at the table will be the president."</s>President Trump certainly has a flair for the dramatic.

The announcement Thursday night that the president of the United States had accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un shocked the world.

That is the kind of phrase that is overused — in politics and sports, in particular — but it's appropriate in this case.

"This is quite extraordinary," former U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered on Thursday night. Hill represented the U.S. in multilateral talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration.

Extraordinary because no other sitting U.S. president has met with a North Korean leader. (Jimmy Carter met with then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1994 as a former president, and former President Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong Il in 2009 to negotiate the release of two journalists.)

Extraordinary because the rhetoric between the countries has been heated in recent months with Trump referring to Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and a "madman," and Kim referring to Trump as a "lunatic" and "loser."

Extraordinary because few thought this realistically could happen. Trump has said in the past that he would be open to meeting with Kim, but on Tuesday, when asked about the possibility, he was noncommittal. "We're going to see what happens," he said.

The surprise nature of the announcement gave the impression of an ad hoc gambit rather than a careful, well-thought-out approach to dealing with an unpredictable nuclear regime.

In diplomacy, it comes with incredible risk to subject a principal to a one-on-one meeting where results aren't guaranteed — or at least close. Typically, spade work is done by lower-level experts for months, if not years.

Trump is banking on the power of his personality for a breakthrough. But some recent domestic examples provide little evidence Trump will deal with this particularly thorny issue masterfully.

After Trump's televised meetings on immigration and guns, participants were left confused. Instead of command performances, there was disorganization and a lack of policy depth.

What's more, the Trump administration's stance on North Korea has been something of a whiplash. Washington, with Trump's backing, has pushed for ramping up sanctions against Pyongyang. And the White House reportedly scoffed at the State Department's special envoy who tried to pursue direct talks late last year.

"He's such a dreamer," one White House official told Reuters sarcastically of State's point man on North Korea, Joseph Yun.

Seemingly out of frustration with a lack of effort at pursuing direct diplomacy and a peaceful solution, Yun retired — just last week.

When it comes to an issue as dangerous and delicate as North Korea, this isn't how it's normally done. At the same time, Trump's theory of everything is that the way it has always been done hasn't worked, so let's try something else.

That high-risk, high-reward approach has its skeptics, but not everyone is dismissing it out of hand.

"We were quickly heading down the road to a possible military confrontation with the North Koreans and a major step toward diplomacy is a most welcome turn of events," Suzanne DiMaggio, senior fellow at the think tank New America, said on NPR's Morning Edition on Friday.

Hill, the former U.S. negotiator on North Korea, said Trump's out-of-the-box stance may very well have been what spurred this.

"Frankly, he may be right about some of this, because it was pretty clear that the U.S. was kind of going relentlessly on this issue," Hill said on All Things Considered. "And he's such a — how to put it — different kind of president that — he seemed to be prepared to talk about things that other presidents have not been prepared to talk about.

"For example, in Washington the last few weeks, there's been a discussion about the so-called bloody nose and the idea that somehow we could launch some kind of strike against the North Koreans," he added. "So it could be that this kind of attitude unconstrained by what anyone in the past has done kind of gave the North Koreans pause."

DiMaggio and others said preparation and expectations-setting are going to prove important. In particular, the president should stop raising the bar for the possibility that the North will give up its nuclear program entirely, like the White House and the president did Thursday.

"We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. "In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain."

The president then tweeted that Kim "talked about denuclearization ... not just a freeze."

"We need to go into the mindset that this is going to be a long, arduous process," DiMaggio said. "The North Koreans are not going to give up their nuclear program anytime soon. They may well never give it up. ... We need to really get in place the priorities that we want to achieve in the near term."

But the expectations horse may have already left the barn. Here was Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner on NPR's Morning Edition: "If the president of the United States meets with Kim Jong Un and does not walk away with what should be those concrete steps toward denuclearization, then I don't see how it's any closer to the kind of peace on the peninsula that we have been seeking."

Hill cautioned against that mindset, saying there needs to be other attainable goals on the table. "It's important to get down all the steps with the last one being complete denuclearization," he said.

"I don't think we're going to get an absolute goal of denuclearization," Bill Richardson, a Democrat and former ambassador to the United Nations who has been to North Korea eight times, said on CNN on Friday. "I think the president needs to temper that."

"Risks need to be mitigated by very good staff work"

Preparation is key, experts agree, but the staffing situation in the White House and at the State Department makes observers nervous.

"What's important," Hill said, "is the U.S. has some clear understanding of what goes forward, because a presidential meeting is kind of coin of the realm, and the idea that we are just going to have a pause in their testing without really concrete understandings of what goes forward — that's risky, and those risks need to be mitigated by very good staff work."

When it comes to that staff work, there are some danger signs. Diplomatic experts have been sidelined in this administration. As NPR diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen points out, there is a thin bench at the State Department currently when it comes to dealing with North Korea — not only did Yun retire, someone who joined the Foreign Service in 1985, but there is also no assistant secretary of state for East Asia (she's currently going through her confirmation process). Trump still hasn't nominated an ambassador to South Korea.

A career diplomat is currently serving in that role, which can be a good thing, but all of it points to unsteadiness and inconsistency at the staff level, and in talks with a rogue regime, one false move can have massive ripple effects and unintended consequences.

What's more, when the announcement came down, it was the deputy secretary of state at the White House, not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He is currently in Africa. He said this was not a "surprise," but he also signaled that Trump made the decision on his own.

This was "a decision the President took himself," Tillerson said, per CNN, in Djibouti, a day after Tillerson questioned "whether conditions are right" for negotiations.

"We're a long way from negotiations," Tillerson said in Ethiopia on Thursday. "We just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it. I don't know yet, until we are able to meet ourselves face to face with representatives of North Korea, whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations."

On Friday, though, Tillerson was put in the position of trying to walk a very fine line between the words "negotiations" and "talks."

"With respect to talks with North Korea versus negotiations," he said, "and I think this seems to be something that people continue to struggle with the difference — my comments have been that the conditions are not right for negotiations."

Can Trump stick to the script?

Either way, talks or negotiations with North Korea are high stakes, especially when the president is involved. And this president, in particular, has had trouble sticking to the script.

"His primary problem is sticking to talking points and really laying the kind of groundwork that has to be laid for the kind of serious negotiations that are going to take place," former Obama Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta told CNN.

"It's risky," Richardson said. "We've got to be properly prepared, and we cannot underestimate Kim Jong Un. He's evolving into a strategic thinker, into a man with an endgame."

To that point, congressional Republicans are sharpening their sabers.

"I do believe that North Korea now believes President Trump will use military force if he has to," South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement. "A word of warning to North Korean President Kim Jong Un — the worst possible thing you can do is meet with President Trump in person and try to play him. If you do that, it will be the end of you — and your regime."

Still, while Trump's agreeing to a meeting surprised almost everyone and didn't relieve skepticism, experts welcomed the news.

"This is a positive step," Panetta said. "The world is breathing a sigh of relief as a result of having these negotiations, even having this kind of meeting."

But they warned about something else: "One of the first priorities is going to have to be how to soundproof this process from President Trump's tweets and rants," DiMaggio said, "otherwise we are going to be in for a rocky road ahead."

Or, as Richardson put it: "I think this is big stakes, a big gamble, but I'm supporting the president's effort to do it. Just be careful and don't tweet. Don't tweet. Just stay low."</s>The White House on Friday rejected arguments that President Trump is giving North Korea a political win by agreeing to meet with Kim Jong Un, and said the meeting will not take place until Pyongyang takes "concrete steps" toward denuclearization.

"The president is getting exactly what he wants. He is getting the opportunity to have the North Koreans actually denuclearize. Nothing is changing on the United States position," said press secretary Sarah Sanders.

"I definitely don't think that the president is getting nothing when we've already said ... that the president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions," she added.

Trump announced late Thursday that he would meet with the North Korean dictator by May, after a South Korean delegation briefed administration officials on Kim's "commitment to denuclearization" and willingness to engage in talks.

While the White House has touted the development as an important step toward permanent denuclearization, some have questioned whether a face-to-face meeting will lend credibility to the North Korea's authoritarian ruler. Sanders pushed back on such criticism and said the summit represents historic progress.

"The president is getting promises out of North Korea that have not been made in any recent years," she said.</s>WASHINGTON -- The White House on Friday tried to swat away criticism that the U.S. is getting nothing in exchange for agreeing to a face-to-face summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said North Korea has made promises to denuclearize, stop its nuclear and missile testing, and allow joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises. But questions remained over exactly what North Korea means by "denuclearize" and what the U.S. might be risking with a highly publicized summit that will build up Kim's stature among world leaders.

"Let's not forget that the North Koreans did promise something," Sanders said, responding to a reporter's question about why Trump agreed to a meeting -- unprecedented between leaders of the two nations -- without preconditions.

She added: "We are not going to have this meeting take place until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea."

Still, the White House indicated that planning for the meeting was fully on track.

The previous night's announcement of the summit marked a turnaround after a year of escalating tensions and insults between the two leaders. A personal meeting was all but unthinkable while Trump was being dismissed as a "senile dotard" and the North Korean "rocket man" was snapping off weapons tests in his quest for a nuclear arsenal that could threaten the U.S. mainland.

North Korea's capabilities are indeed close to posing a direct atomic threat to the U.S. And the wider world has grown fearful of a resumption of the Korean War that ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.

The prospect of the first U.S.-North Korea summit has allayed those fears somewhat. The European Union, Russia and China -- whose leader spoke by phone with Trump on Friday -- have all welcomed the move.

North Korea's government has yet to formally comment on its invitation to Trump. South Korea said the president agreed to meet Kim by May, but Sanders said Friday that no time and place had been set -- a refrain Trump repeated in a Friday night tweet. Meanwhile Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking to reporters traveling with him on a trip to Africa, said talks between Trump and Kim should happen within weeks.

Trump said in his tweet: "The deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the World. Time and place to be determined."

The North's openness to denuclearization and desisting from weapons tests were relayed to Trump by South Korean officials who had met with Kim on Monday and took his summit invitation to the White House. Trump discussed the offer with top aides Thursday. Some expressed their reservations but ultimately supported the president's decision to accept it, according to U.S. officials who were briefed on the talks and requested anonymity to discuss them.

Tillerson on Friday drew a fine line between talks and negotiations with North Korea, suggesting large differences in expectations for both. He also repeated his assessment that possible complex negotiations may be a long time coming.

"My comments have been that the conditions are not right for negotiations," Tillerson said in Djibouti. Tillerson has made this assertion frequently in recent months as he traveled the world seeking to enlist nations in the administration's "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs.

He did not, however, elaborate on the distinction between talks and negotiations, other than saying people "struggle" with the difference.

Tillerson said the administration has for some time been receptive to the idea of holding face-to-face talks with Kim.

"In the president's judgment, that time has arrived now," Tillerson said.

Some lawmakers and foreign policy experts voiced skepticism about the wisdom of agreeing to a summit without preparations by lower-level officials, particularly given the lack of trust between the two sides.

North Korea is also holding three American citizens for what Washington views as political reasons.

[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first year]

"A presidential visit is really the highest coin in the realm in diplomacy circles," said Bruce Klingner, a Korea expert at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, adding that Trump "seemed to spend it without getting anything in return, not even the release of the three U.S. captives."

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., noted the frayed relationship between the U.S. and North Korea and expressed tepid optimism that a summit could pave the way to peace.

"But we must remain deeply skeptical of North Korea's intentions and under no circumstances should the United States and our allies grant unilateral concessions," Cotton said in a statement.

Some say Trump could be setting himself up for failure amid doubts over whether Kim has any intention to relinquish a formidable atomic arsenal that he has made central to his personal stature and North Korea's standing in the world. Kim would also boost his own standing by becoming the first of the three hereditary leaders of North Korea to sit down with an American president.

Evans Revere, a former senior State Department official experienced in negotiating with North Korea, warned that there is a disconnect between how the North and the U.S. describe "denuclearization" of the divided Korean Peninsula. For the U.S., it refers to North Korea giving up its nukes; for North Korea, it also means removing the threat of American forces in South Korea and the nuclear deterrent with which the U.S. protects its allies in the region.

"The fundamental definition of denuclearization is quite different between Washington and Pyongyang," Revere said, noting that as recently as Jan. 1, Kim had vigorously reaffirmed the importance of nukes for North Korea's security. He said that misunderstandings at a summit could lead to "recrimination and anger" and even military action if Trump were embarrassed by failure.

"There is good reason to talk, but only if we are talking about something that is worth doing and that could be reasonably verified," said former Defense Secretary William Perry, who dealt with North Korea during President Bill Clinton's administration. "Otherwise we are setting ourselves up for a major diplomatic failure."

Many of Trump's supporters, meanwhile, presented the meeting as a breakthrough and reveled in the tempered praise of Democrats who have long advocated for direct talks with North Korea and an approach to the country that doesn't involve a pre-emptive strike.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the White House press secretary's father, feigned a Twitter heart attack: "Pray for me! I'm being rushed to the Cardiac Unit right now. I just heard a CNN contributor actually admit that realDonaldTrump and his policies get credit for the historic North Korea breakthrough. I hope I get to ER in time!"

Basketball star Dennis Rodman, who has visited North Korea, cheered Trump's move. Rodman told The Washington Post that Trump was "on the way to a historical meeting no U.S. president has ever done" and said he looked forward to bringing "more basketball diplomacy to North Korea in the upcoming months." He asked Trump to send his regards to Kim and his family.

The White House maintains that Kim has been compelled to reach out for presidential-level talks because of Trump's policy of "maximum pressure."

"North Korea's desire to meet to discuss denuclearization -- while suspending all ballistic-missile and nuclear testing -- is evidence that President Trump's strategy to isolate the Kim regime is working," Vice President Mike Pence, who has visited the region, said Friday in a statement.

However, other presidents have lodged economic sanctions against North Korea, as Trump has. And the North has made a habit of reaching out after raising fears during previous crises, with offers of dialogue meant to win aid and concessions. Some analysts speculated that the North is trying to peel Washington away from its ally Seoul, weaken crippling sanctions and buy time for nuclear development. The North has also, according to the U.S., repeatedly cheated on past nuclear deals.

Without question, experts say, the North wants a peace treaty to end the technically still-active Korean War and drive all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, removing what it says is a hostile encirclement of its territory by Washington and Seoul.

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Pennington, Foster Klug, Darlene Superville, Matthew Lee, Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, Tracy Brown and Kim Tong-hyung of The Associated Press and by Carol Morello and Paul Sonne of The Washington Post.</s>The White House appeared Friday to put conditions on a much-anticipated meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying it would only happen once the rogue nation takes "concrete and verifiable action" to demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization.

"We've accepted the invitation to talk based on them following through on concrete actions on the promises they've made," Sanders said Friday.

The surprise announcement of a possible Trump-Kim summit came after the president met Thursday with South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong. Chung briefed the president about his recent meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

But less than 24 hours later, the White House appeared to hedge somewhat and call into question whether the meeting would ever come to fruition. Sanders appeared to add the condition that North Korea take tangible steps towards denuclearization before any meeting takes place. Last year, North Korea successfully tested its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

When pressed by reporters if that meant that the meeting might not happen after all, Sanders underscored that the onus was on North Korea. She emphasized that "nothing" had changed from the U.S. viewpoint and that Trump's "maximum pressure campaign" against North Korea would continue.

Sanders didn't outline what actions would fulfill that denuclearization prerequisite, only saying that the national security and intelligence community would make those determinations. A time and place for the Trump-Kim meeting have not yet been set, although South Korea says it's expected by May.

As NPR's Elise Hu reported Thursday, "Any meeting between these two leaders would be historic. The U.S. has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, the countries are adversaries dating to the Korean War and repeatedly traded heated insults last year, including Trump's remarks at the United Nations, in which he vowed to 'totally destroy' North Korea if the U.S. was threatened."

Trump has also ribbed Kim on social media frequently, only heightening global tensions. Trump often referred to Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and bragged on Twitter that his nuclear button in the U.S. is bigger than the North Korean leader's.

Sanders also denied that the Thursday announcement had been haphazard in any way or that key foreign policy officials had been left out. Hours before the announcement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had declared the U.S. is "a long ways from negotiations" with North Korea. But Tillerson, who's traveling in Africa, later emphasized a distinction between formal negotiations and what he called "talks."

Sanders also pushed back on the reports that national security adviser H.R. McMaster could be on his way out and said she had no reason to believe that McMaster wouldn't be a part of the upcoming North Korea talks. Sanders called the three-star Army general a "valued member" of the Trump administration.

"Look, the president has an incredible team that is surrounding him," Sanders said. "But, at the end of the day, the ultimate person to lead that negotiation or that conversation and be at the table will be the president."
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that the White House needs to see "concrete and verifiable steps" toward the denuclearization of North Korea before meeting with Kim Jong-un.