Will upcoming summits offer risks or promises before Trump-Kim meeting?
CGTN
2018-03-30
After an “unofficial” but “significant” visit to Beijing, the 34-year-old Kim Jong Un, leader of the DPRK, appears ready to hammer out his tight schedule for a “summit diplomacy” denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
On Thursday, the third high-level inter-Korean talks set April 27 the date for the first summit since 2007 between the DPRK and ROK, weeks before Kim’s meeting with US President Donald Trump in May. Tokyo is also seeking its bilateral summit with Pyongyang as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe risks being left out on the nuclear issue.
At Beijing’s invitation, Kim met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his first overseas visit from Sunday to Wednesday.
The Xi-Kim summit helped kick in “the season of summit diplomacy among the major powers,” Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor at Renmin University in China, suggested on CGTN’s The Point (@thepointwithlx).
“Kim will visit Russia very soon,” Cheng indicated. “We will witness a lot of summits in order to cope with DPRK’s denuclearization.”
On Wednesday, Moscow hailed the Xi-Kim summit as “significant,” but dismissed speculation that President Vladimir Putin could soon meet with Kim, UPI reported.
Russia, China, DPRK, ROK, the US and Japan are members of the Six-Party Talks which were launched for nuclear issue in 2003 and suspended in December 2008 after the DPRK walked out of the talks in protest against UN sanctions.
Cheng said that bilateral talks could be “more efficient” at the moment, adding that members would resume the Six-Party Talks when ready.
Jim Walsh, a senior research associate at MIT Security Studies Program, believed that ROK is particularly channeling the DPRK and the US regarding “preconditions” and “distrust,” noting the Trump-Kim summit could have “promise and risks.”
“If it goes well, it could be the beginning of a new chapter,” Walsh said. “If it goes oily, it could put parties on a fast track to an armed conflict.”
The Point with Liu Xin is a 30-minute current affairs program on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 9:30 p.m. BJT (1330GMT), with rebroadcasts at 5:30 a.m. (2130GMT) and 10:30 a.m. (0230GMT).
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