FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Trump-Kim Summit Is ‘99%’ Says R.O.K. Official; Is Pence the 1%?

May 22, 2018 (EIRNS)—According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, the chief of the R.O.K.’s presidential National Security Office Chung Eui-yong said on May 21, “We believe there is a 99.9% chance the North Korea-U.S. summit will be held as scheduled. But we’re just preparing for many different possibilities.” R.O.K. President Moon Jae-in was meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington today.

Speaking to the media in Seoul, Chung said of the recent hardening of the North Korean position—expressed again yesterday with the denial of visas to South Korean journalists to observe the nuclear site destruction in North Korea May 24—“we are trying to understand the North’s position.”

Prior to Moon’s meeting with Trump, Moon highlighted the need to hold the U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore June 12 as scheduled.

“I am very well aware that there are skeptical views in the U.S. on whether the North Korea-U.S. summit would succeed and if complete denuclearization of North Korea would be realized,”

Moon told a quasi-joint press conference shortly before their meeting, according to the South Korean Presidency pool reports.

“However, there may never have been any development in history, should we remain skeptical and expect failure just because we have failed before.”

The remaining “1% chance” could well be Vice President Mike Pence, who, in a Fox News interview May 21, misused President Trump’s May 17 statement to mean its opposite and revive the disastrous “Libya model” talk by National Security Advisor John Bolton. “You know,” Pence said,

“there was some talk of the Libyan model last week. And as the President made clear, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal.... It would be a great mistake for Kim Jong-un to think he could play Donald Trump.”

Pence’s silly locker-room bluster should put impeacher Democrats like Rep. Al Green of Texas on notice, that while generally opposing Trump’s best achievements, they are voting for his worst mistake—Pence.