President Trump’s “high-risk gamble” to meet with North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un has the support of a senior House Democrat, following a briefing from the State Department.
“It’s a high-risk gamble, but I would like to see nothing more than a positive outcome from a face-to-face meeting,” New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Friday.
Trump’s decision to accept Kim’s invitation sets the stage for an unprecedented meeting between leaders of the United States and North Korea. It is expected to take place “before May,” at a time when U.S. intelligence officials estimate that the pariah regime could acquire the ability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon within months. That has Democrats and Republicans supporting talks, while taking a hard line with the regime.
“Still, the president should be clear-eyed about Pyongyang’s intentions and avoid snap decisions that appear out of step with his top diplomats,” Engel warned. “Past experience demonstrates that negotiations with the North require deft and cunning.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., an ally of Trump in pushing for a more hawkish policy with respect to the threat of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, offered a similar combination of warning and encouragement.
“A summit could possibly break those patterns and lead to the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” he said. “But we must remain deeply skeptical of North Korea’s intentions and under no circumstances should the United States and our allies grant unilateral concessions.”
Vice President Mike Pence has pledged repeatedly that the United States would not ease the international sanctions campaign against North Korea in the run-up to the talks. But Engel suggested the talks might fail anyway, citing the brewing Democratic complaint that senior diplomats have left the State Department during without being replaced by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
“America’s diplomatic corps will need to lay the groundwork and must be consulted every step of the way,” he said. “Unfortunately, the skilled and senior diplomats needed for these sensitive talks are precisely the seasoned experts that the State Department has been hemorrhaging for the last year.”
