Following Thursday night’s historic announcement that President Trump will be meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, at some point before May, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders warned “the meeting won’t take place without concrete actions that match the promises that have been made by North Korea.”
Sanders rejected further questions by reporters on exactly what this meant, saying she didn’t want to get into hypotheticals. It seems the bilateral talks came with some promise by the North Koreans ahead of the meeting.
South Korean officials set out the proposal for the meeting, in the brief Thursday announcement, as involving North Korea suspending ballistic missile and nuclear tests. It may be that those are the “promises” being referred to, or there may be other details that haven’t been made public. Still, President Trump has insisted the talks are going to happen, and doesn’t seem to be echoing these White House comments suggested they might not.
Indeed, White House talk of the actions needing to be “concrete and verifiable” raises questions, as North Korea would not be able to carry out a nuclear test, or ballistic missile test, without the world knowing about it. Such verification goes without saying. This again seems to make sense with President Trump’s comments on the talks happening, as they would be presumptive, barring some very unforeseen action to sabotage them.