HANOI, Vietnam -- President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un abruptly cut short their two-day summit Thursday, with talks collapsing as both leaders offered differing accounts of why they walked away without an agreement or a clear plan on how to keep the dialogue alive.
The fundamental disagreements rested on the trade-offs between the United States providing relief from sanctions and North Korea's steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
The two leaders and their delegations left the meeting site in Vietnam's capital without sitting for a planned lunch or participating in a scheduled signing ceremony.
The breakdown raised serious doubts about whether the two sides can keep the diplomatic outreach moving forward.
Trump said the main impediment to a deal was Kim's requirement that the United States lift all economic sanctions on North Korea in exchange for the closure of one nuclear facility, which still would have left Pyongyang with a large arsenal of missiles and warheads.
But Trump also raised concerns about North Korea's concealment of parts of its nuclear industry.
Hours later, North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, offered a slightly different take at a rare news conference, arguing that Kim's regime sought only "partial" sanctions relief in return for dismantling the North's main enrichment capabilities for fissile material.
In a separate news conference, North Korea's vice foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, suggested that Kim had "lost the will to engage in deal-making" as the talks unraveled. The United States, she said, was missing a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," and she said no future meetings between the two sides were planned.
"We had some options, but at this time we decided not to do any of the options," Trump said. He added, "Sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times."
Trump made no mention of the disagreement as he addressed U.S. troops during a stopover at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that Trump was aware of the North Korean statements about what happened at the summit. She made no other comments.
For Trump, the surprising turn of events amounted to a significant diplomatic setback. The president flew 20 hours to Vietnam with hopes of producing demonstrable progress toward North Korea's denuclearization, building upon his first summit with Kim last summer in Singapore.
At a news conference before he left Vietnam to return to Washington, Trump said he and Kim did not commit to holding a third summit. Still, he said, they parted ways on positive terms.
"This wasn't a walkaway like you get up and walk out," Trump told reporters. "No, this was very friendly. We shook hands. ... There's a warmth that we have, and I hope that stays. I think it will. But we're positioned to do something very special."
Choe, North Korea's vice foreign minister, was less optimistic.
"The impression I got observing this summit from the side was that our chairman seems to have difficulty understanding the U.S. way of reckoning," she said. "I felt that our chairman has lost the will to engage in deal-making, with the U.S. saying that even a partial lifting of sanctions for the civilian economy is hard."
But today, North Korea's official news agency put a more positive spin on the summit, saying Trump and Kim "had a constructive and candid exchange of their opinions over the practical issues arising in opening up a new era of the improvement" of relations between the two nations.
KIM'S PROMISE
The United States says U.N. sanctions cannot be unwound until North Korea fully denuclearizes. But it had left open the door to some marginal relief of unilateral U.S. sanctions if North Korea took steps in the right direction.
North Korea's foreign minister said the North had sought an end to "sanctions that hamper the civilian economy, and the livelihood of all people in particular," citing five out of 11 sanctions packages imposed by the U.N. Security Council.
While not total sanctions relief, that would have amounted to a significant easing of the pressure on North Korea.
Trump said Kim promised he would not conduct missile launches or test nuclear weapons. In return for sanctions relief, he said, Kim was willing to close the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, the site of North Korea's main nuclear reactor and its only source of plutonium to make bombs. But Trump said Kim did not offer to close other, covert facilities to enrich uranium.
"I think they were surprised we knew," he said. "We know the country very well, believe it or not. We know every inch of that country, and we have to get what we have to get."
Ri, North Korea's foreign minister, later confirmed that the North would be willing to "permanently dismantle all the nuclear material production facilities" at the main Yongbyon nuclear site and allow U.S. nuclear experts to observe.
He did not mention uranium enrichment facilities at other sites, leaving doubts about the North's sincerity in the talks.
"It is difficult to say whether there might be a better agreement than the one based on our proposal at current stage," Ri said. "Our principal stance will remain invariable, and our proposal will never be changed, even though U.S. proposes negotiation again in the future."
Trump zeroed in on sanctions as the key sticking point.
"It was about the sanctions," he said. "Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn't do that. They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn't give up all of the sanctions for that."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hopes negotiators from the two countries will be able to narrow differences in the future, but he did not announce any firm plans to continue talking.
"We were certainly closer today than 36 hours ago, and we're closer than we were a month or two before that. So real progress was made," he said. "I think everybody hoped we could do this better, but the departure was with an agreement we continue to work on what has been an incredibly difficult problem. Everyone walked away in that spirit."
It was clear that the two sides remain far apart on some key issues, including a fundamental one -- what denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula would actually mean. It is still not clear what demands Kim would place on U.S. forces in South Korea and in the region for him to be willing to surrender his nuclear arsenal.
"He has a certain vision," Trump said. "It's not exactly our vision, but it's a lot closer than it was a year ago."
In the run-up to the talks, the United States had been offering to declare an end to the 1950-1953 Korean War and open liaison offices in each other's capitals, while demanding that North Korea at least agree to end its production of fissile material to make bombs.
But it was clear that the North Korean counteroffer left a large gap between the two sides.
Still, after two days of meetings with Kim at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel, Trump continued to praise Kim. He called him a great leader and boasted about the warmth of their friendship.
Trump did not publicly address Kim's record of brutality and human-rights atrocities during his Vietnam trip.
Asked by a reporter whether he had discussed with Kim the case of Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea for 17 months after being accused of stealing a propaganda poster, Trump said he had.
Warmbier was in a coma through most of his imprisonment and died at age 22, shortly after being sent home to Cincinnati. Kim rules a totalitarian state, and his government has insisted that Warmbier was nothing but a "criminal."
Trump said Kim denied to him any knowledge of or role in his treatment.
"He tells me that he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word," Trump said. "Those prisons are rough. They're rough places, and bad things happen. But I don't believe he knew about it."
HOPE IN SOUTH
On Thursday, South Korea described the breakdown of nuclear talks between Trump and Kim as unfortunate, but expressed hope that the two countries can continue an active dialogue.
The collapse of the Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam is a setback for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, whose desire for closer relations between the Koreas hinges on a nuclear breakthrough between the U.S. and North Korea. Moon had planned to announce new proposals for inter-Korean engagement, possibly including economic cooperation, in a ceremony today marking the 100th anniversary of a 1919 uprising by Koreans against Japanese colonial rule.
Moon has been held back in his drive for inter-Korean engagement by tough U.S.-led sanctions against North Korea which prohibit many kinds of economic ties.
South Korea's presidential Blue House said in a statement that it believes the U.S. and North Korea deepened their understandings of each other during their "long and deep discussions" in Hanoi. It said Trump's willingness to offer sanctions relief in exchange for broader nuclear disarmament steps by the North shows that the nuclear negotiations have entered an "elevated level."
"The [South Korean] government will do all it can to ensure that the United States and North Korea can maintain momentum for dialogue while continuing their close communication and cooperation," the Blue House said.
It said Moon spoke with Trump on the phone as the American leader flew out of Vietnam, and that Trump expressed a firm commitment to continue a dialogue with the North.
In Tokyo, Shinzo Abe, prime minister of Japan, said he had also spoken about the summit's outcome with Trump. "I fully support President Trump's decision not to make the easy compromise," he said, adding that he was determined to meet Kim next.
Information for this article was contributed by Philip Rucker, Simon Denyer, David Nakamura, John Hudson and Min Joo Kim of The Washington Post; by Edward Wong of The New York Times; and by Deb Riechmann, Hyung-Jin Kim, Catherine Lucey, Jill Colvin, Zeke Miller, Darlene Superville and Kim Tong-Hyung of The Associated Press.
A Section on 03/01/2019