White House hedges on Trump-Kim meeting; need ‘concrete steps’ first

WASHINGTON — The White House said Friday that US President Donald Trump won’t hold a highly-anticipated meeting with North Korea’s leader unless he takes “concrete steps” that match promises made ahead of the talks.

Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said North Korea has made promises to denuclearize, stop its nuclear and missile testing and allow joint US-South Korean military exercises.

Sanders said Trump won’t have the meeting “until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea.”

No time or place has been chosen. No sitting US president has ever met with a North Korean leader.

Her comments come after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged that Washington was surprised by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s willingness to hold direct talks with the US on the nuclear standoff in the Korean peninsula.

“What changed was his posture in a fairly dramatic way,” Tillerson said in Djibouti during a five-nation Africa tour.

“In all honesty, that came as a little bit of a surprise to us, as well that he was so forward-leaning in his conversations with the delegation from South Korea.”

The meeting is due to take place by the end of May.

News of the summit, which South Korean President Moon Jae-in said was “like a miracle,” is the latest step in a quickening detente after a period of heightened rhetoric and extreme tension between Washington and Pyongyang.

Just hours before the summit announcement, Tillerson had said that the United States was “a long way” from talking directly to North Korea.

“In terms of direct talks… we’re a long way from negotiations, we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it,” Tillerson had said in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Thursday.

A first step would be “talks about talks” to see if “conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations,” Tillerson had said.