WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Kim Jong Un wants a historic, high-stakes meeting as soon as possible and suggested that the North Korean dictator has been "very open" and "very honorable," a sharply different assessment of a leader he once denounced as "Little Rocket Man."
The United States and North Korea have been negotiating a summit between Trump and Kim to be held in May or June to broker a deal on Pyongyang's nuclear program. Trump, who has struck an optimistic tone on the situation in recent days, said Tuesday that the United States and North Korea were having "good discussions."
"We have been told directly that they would like to have the meeting as soon as possible. We think that's a great thing for the world," Trump said at the White House alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. "Kim Jong Un, he really has been very open and, I think, very honorable from everything we're seeing."
Trump cautioned that North Korea had not followed through on previous promises, but credited tough steps from his administration -- including sanctions and organizing pressure from international allies -- for having forced Pyongyang to hold talks. And he again suggested that he would "leave the table" if the negotiations were not productive or if North Korea was not operating in good faith.
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"We'll see where that all goes," the president said. "Maybe it will be wonderful or maybe it won't."
Trump's comments came days after a flurry of moves from North Korea that the White House was anxious to promote as signs that its coercion campaign was working. On Saturday, North Korea announced it will close its nuclear testing facility and suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests -- a move welcomed by Trump as "big progress."
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However, the North stopped short of suggesting it will give up its nuclear weapons -- as Trump suggested in a weekend tweet -- or scale back its production of missiles and their related components.
This week, U.S.-allied South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim will hold a summit in the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas that could lay the ground for Trump's planned meeting with Kim. The leaders of the U.S. and North Korea have never met during six decades of hostility since the Korean War.
The exact date and location of the possible summit has not been determined.
As diplomacy gathered pace, White House officials and congressional aides said the Trump administration was considering nominating Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, as ambassador to South Korea. That key position has been vacant since Trump took office 15 months ago.
Harris has already been nominated to be ambassador to Australia. His Senate confirmation hearing for the Australia position had been due to take place Tuesday but was postponed.
In Canberra, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she had been told by acting U.S. Secretary of State John Sullivan that Harris would become South Korea's ambassador and that a new appointment to the post in Australia would be a priority for the next secretary of state.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who is Trump's choice for secretary of state, said at his own confirmation hearing this month that the vacancy in Seoul needed "immediate attention."
Harris has spent nearly 40 years in uniform and has a reputation as a straight talker. In testimony last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Harris said the U.S. could not be "overly optimistic" about outcomes for the planned Trump-Kim summit.
"We have to go into this eyes wide open," he told lawmakers.
Last year, the U.S. spearheaded through the U.N. Security Council the toughest international sanctions yet against North Korea in response to three long-range missile launches and its most powerful nuclear test explosion yet. The Trump administration supplemented those restrictions with unilateral U.S. sanctions against firms that had conducted illicit trade with the North.
This year, Kim has pivoted from confrontation to diplomacy and, according to South Korea and China, has expressed a commitment to denuclearization.
Later Tuesday, Trump sidestepped a question as to why he would use the word "honorable" to describe Kim, who has been accused of starving his own people, executing his political opponents and ordering the killing of a member of his own family.
A Section on 04/25/2018