Foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang praised President Trump on Friday for walking away from the latest North Korea summit without making a deal, dismissing the proposals put forth by leader Kim Jong Un.
“I mean the North Koreans were putting forth absurd proposals,” Chang told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Mattie Duppler on “Rising.”
“Whether you accept their version of their proposal or what President Trump said at the press conference, nonetheless President Trump should have walked from Hanoi and he did, and that’s really important because it says to the North Koreans that they’ve got to negotiate in good faith,” he continued.
Trump and Kim abruptly cut their two-day summit short on Thursday amid differing accounts of the negotiations.
During a news conference following the failed talks, Trump told reporters that Kim offered to disable a key nuclear facility if the U.S. lifted sanctions on the country “in their entirety.” But Trump said the North Korean leader wouldn’t commit the same for the country’s weapons program.
North Korean officials promptly countered Trump’s claims about the breakdown in talks, insisting that leaders only sought partial — not full — relief from sanctions in exchange for dismantling its main nuclear complex.
“What we proposed was not the removal of all sanctions but the partial removal,” foreign minister Ri Yong Ho said during a rare news conference in Hanoi.
A number of countries and international bodies, including the United Nations Security Council, have imposed sanctions against North Korea in an effort to discourage the country’s nuclear ambitions.
Trump announced last year what he called the “largest ever” tranche of sanctions against Pyongyang. The sanctions were aimed at targeting North Korea’s ability to evade international sanctions and conduct illicit maritime activities that facilitate coal and fuel transports.
—Tess Bonn
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