Islam Times - Trump team welcomes cancellation of North Korea summit

Islam Times - Most of the people in the administration of US President Donald Trump have welcomed the cancellation of the summit with North Korea, an American political analyst says.

James Jatras, a former Senate foreign policy adviser in Washington, made the remarks after Trump announced on Thursday that he was calling off the summit North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, which was scheduled to take place on June 12 in Singapore.

On Friday, however, Trump had indicated the summit could go ahead as planned after welcoming a conciliatory statement from Pyongyang, which said it remained open to talks.

On Friday night, Trump said his administration was having “productive talks” with Pyongyang about reinstating the June 12 summit.

“The cancellation of the Trump-Kim summit was something I think that was welcomed by much of the team around President Trump who did not want that meeting to happen in the first place. They really did not trust what would happen if Trump and Kim met and face[d] each other and came up something between the two men that was not done by all the various specialists and experts. There is a lot at stake, and not wanting to have an agreement with North Korea,” Jatras said.

“But I think this may have backfired. South Koreans went into something of a panic when the meeting was cancelled. We saw that President Kim and President Moon met with each other overnight our time. And I think there is an attempt at the top level to get this thing back on track which I think is really an excellent thing,” he added.

“I don’t know some other rabbit would be pulled out of hat by people here in Washington to try to scuttle this thing again but we live in a very uncertain period right now,” the analyst concluded.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in criticized Trump’s cancellation of the summit, calling the move "shocking and very regrettable." Moon has been acting as a go-between in diplomatic efforts for the potential summit.

The summit announcement came after several months of unprecedented cordial diplomacy between South and North Koreas, which had been adversaries for decades.

The United States, which has substantial presence in South Korea, was on a war footing with the North over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

The development resurrected hopes that Trump and Kim could soon meet to try to find a solution to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula that has escalated over the past year.