WASHINGTON — Observers should lower expectations on the outcome of a denuclearization summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the former director of national intelligence said.
“I don’t think that we should expect some grand bargain to occur after a one-day meeting,” former national intelligence director James Clapper told WTOP in a Friday interview.
So what should people hope for?
Clapper said, in his mind, a successful summit would end with the U.S. and North Korea agreeing to establish a mechanism for low-level communication between Washington and Pyongyang. The system would be similar to what the U.S. once did with Havana, Cuba.
“I think it would give us greater insight and understanding in what’s going on in North Korea,” Clapper said. “It would also give North Korea some degree of security knowing that a U.S. official presence was in their city.”
Clapper’s comments came as a top aide to Kim Jong Un makes a rare visit to Washington to hand a letter from the North Korean leader to President Trump.
“I am confident we are moving in the right direction,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a news conference Thursday in New York.
Pompeo would not say that a June 12 summit in Singapore would definitely be held, but his comments were the most positive from any U.S. official since Trump abruptly canceled the meeting last week after belligerent statements from the North.
Early Thursday, Trump told reporters “we are doing very well” with North Korea. He added there may even need to be a second or third summit meeting to reach a deal on North Korean denuclearization but still hedged, saying “maybe we’ll have none.”
Pompeo, the former CIA chief who has traveled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong Un twice in the past two months, said he believed the country’s leaders are “contemplating a path forward where they can make a strategic shift.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
