SINGAPORE -- President Donald Trump on Saturday cast his summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un as a "one-time shot" for the autocratic leader to ditch his nuclear weapons and enter the community of nations, saying he would know within moments if Kim is serious about the talks.
Trump said Saturday that he was embarking on a "mission of peace," as he departed the Group of Seven meeting in Canada to fly to the site of Tuesday's summit in Singapore.
Saying he has a "clear objective in mind" to persuade Kim to abandon his nuclear program in exchange for unspecified "protections" from the U.S., Trump acknowledged that the direction of the high-stakes meeting is unpredictable, adding it "will always be spur of the moment."
"It's unknown territory in the truest sense, but I really feel confident," he told reporters. "I feel that Kim Jong Un wants to do something great for his people and he has that opportunity, and he won't have that opportunity again."
"It's a one-time shot, and I think it's going to work out very well," Trump said.
The meeting will be the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Unlike traditional summits between heads of state, where most of the work is completed in advance of a photo opportunity, U.S. officials say the only thing certain ahead of these talks will be their unpredictability.
Trump said the outcome will rely heavily on his own instincts. The U.S. president, who prides himself on his deal-making prowess, said he will know "within the first minute" of meeting Kim whether the North Korean leader is serious about the nuclear negotiations.
"You know the way they say you know if you like somebody in the first five seconds? Well, I think very quickly I'll know whether something good is going to happen. I think I'll also know whether it will happen fast. ... And if I think it won't happen, I'm not going to waste my time. I don't want to waste his time," he said.
As he has in recent days, however, the president sought to tamp down expectations, after once having pledged to demand that Kim rapidly turn over his nuclear arsenal. Instead, Trump acknowledged, the summit is unlikely to achieve a major breakthrough, stating that at minimum he would like to "start a dialogue" with Kim.
"I'd like to accomplish more than that," Trump said. But if not, "at least we'll have met each other, we'll have seen each other; hopefully, we'll have liked each other. We'll start that process. ... But I think it will take a little bit of time."
Trump's remarks came two days after he said he didn't need to do a lot of preparation ahead of the historic summit because the relationship between the two leaders would be the more important factor. Foreign policy analysts have said that Kim is likely to attempt to get Trump to agree on mostly symbolic steps, including a peace deal to formally end the Korean War, while biding time on significant commitments toward denuclearization.
"This is a leader who really is an unknown personality," Trump said of Kim. "People don't know much about him. I think that he's going to surprise on the upside, very much on the upside."
Trump rebutted suggestions he had already given Kim a win by agreeing to even have the meeting. Isolated North Korea has long craved international recognition and the prestige of being seen as a nuclear state. In recent months, Kim has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
[NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA: Maps, data on country’s nuclear program]
"What has been done before hasn't worked," Trump said, accusing "haters" of saying he was gifting Kim the meeting.
"We just got three hostages back," Trump said. "We paid nothing."
Trump also praised the North Koreans, saying they have been "really working very well with us" during preparations for the summit, even though Trump had canceled the summit last month after a period of what he called "tremendous anger and open hostility" from the North Korean government. But then Trump did a quick pivot, signaling almost immediately after scrapping the meeting that he was open to going ahead with it after all.
Delegations from both countries then launched into a frenetic period of negotiations that are expected to culminate with Tuesday's meeting.
"So far, so good. We're going to have to see what happens. I very much look forward to it," Trump said.
Still, questions remain about what a deal on North Korea's nuclear weapons could look like.
Trump has said he believes that Kim would agree to denuclearization -- and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that he had received Kim's personal assurances to that effect -- but the two countries have offered differing visions of what that would entail. Despite Kim's apparent eagerness for a summit with Trump, there are doubts that he would fully relinquish his nuclear arsenal, which he may see as his guarantee of survival.
U.S. defense and intelligence officials have assessed the North to be on the threshold of having the capability to strike anywhere in the continental U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile -- a capacity that Trump and other U.S. officials have said they would not tolerate.
Trump reiterated his promise Saturday that the U.S. "will watch over and we'll protect" Kim and his government in return for him giving up the nuclear program. He also indicated that South Korea, China and Japan would be prepared to invest in the North to boost its besieged economy.
SINGAPORE PREPARATIONS
After a long flight aboard Air Force One that will include a refueling stop, the president is scheduled to arrive in Singapore this evening.
The city-state of 5.5 million people bustled with anticipation as workers raced to finish security preparations for an event with little modern-day precedent.
Outside the luxury St. Regis hotel, just beyond a busy upscale shopping corridor, construction crews hoisted concrete bollards into place around the perimeter of the five-star complex where the North Korean delegation is expected to stay.
Television news crews filmed the workers from the sidewalk, and curious residents stopped to take photographs.
A half-mile away at the Shangri-La Hotel, where the U.S. side will stay, Secret Service agents, in a casual uniform of khaki slacks and dark polo shirts, milled about the lobby. A yellow sign, featuring the silhouette of an officer holding a machine gun, was set up in the driveway reading, "Police checks, comply with police orders."
Singapore was selected as the host site because it has significant experience in staging major international events, including a summit between Xi and then-Taiwanese President Ying-jeou in 2015, the first such meeting in nearly seven decades.
Organizers have braced for more than 2,000 reporters, most of whom will be housed in a makeshift media center at the Singapore's Formula One race-pit building. Among the celebrities who have said they will be in the city during the summit are former basketball star Dennis Rodman, one of the few people who have met both Kim and Trump, and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The summit is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. Singapore time on Tuesday. The plan is for it to wrap up in the evening and, if things go well, for there to be a joint declaration, according to a U.S. official. The summit is unlikely to go beyond Tuesday, the official added.
Information for this article was contributed by Catherine Lucey, Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Jennifer Epstein, Toluse Olorunnipa and Nick Wadhams of Bloomberg News; and by David Nakamura of The Washington Post.
A Section on 06/10/2018