President Donald Trump abruptly ended his talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un two hours early over disagreements on denuclearization in Hanoi Thursday.
From Daily Caller:
The summit’s abrupt end marks a disappointing conclusion to what Trump hoped would be a signature achievement and contribution to his foreign policy legacy. White House officials said before the beginning of the summit that the overarching goal of the summit was to agree upon a common definition of denuclearization.
At Trump’s first June 2018 summit with the North Korean leader, the two countries signed a memorandum agreeing in principle to begin a denuclearization process.
The previous summit’s main achievement was securing a cooling period in tensions between the United States and North Korea, which ratcheted up early in Trump’s presidential term, but the president wanted to build upon good relations and establish concrete actions the North Koreans must take.
The concrete nature of the discussion appears to be the fault lines on which the talks broke up.
“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that. They were willing to de-nuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that,” Trump explained in a press conference after the summit, adding, “Sometimes you have to walk.”
