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(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un expressed optimism that the U.S. and North Korea could find a path toward peace, opening a highly anticipated summit between two adversaries that only last year had seemed on the brink of nuclear war.
“I believe this is a good prelude for peace,” Kim said as the two men sat accompanied by top aides an hour into their meetings in Singapore. Trump responded by saying “I do, too.” Looking Kim in the eye, he said “we will solve it, we will be successful.”
The two men greeted each other with a handshake shortly after 9 a.m. local time Tuesday -- 9 p.m. Monday in New York. Despite the warm words, it was unclear whether the first face-to-face encounter between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader could yield the breakthrough necessary to overcome decades of hostility and mistrust.
For each leader, the meeting represents a major gamble, and its outcome will be dissected around the globe for a sense of whether one of the world’s greatest security threats -- Kim’s nuclear arsenal -- can be eliminated. The talks could also lead to a formal end of the Korean War, which remains unfinished after a 1953 armistice.
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The fate of the summit may very well turn on the first moments that they spent alone with each other. Days before, Trump said he expected to know “within the first minute” if Kim was serious about giving up his nuclear weapons.
As the meeting opened at the Capella Hotel on Singapore’s Sentosa Island, the two men entered with somber expressions that quickly gave way to smiles. Moments earlier, Trump had announced his chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, had been sent to the hospital after suffering a heart attack.
“It’s my honor, and we will have a terrific relationship, I have no doubt,” Trump said in brief remarks to reporters moments after their history-making handshake.
“It was not an easy journey,” Kim said. “We’ve had a past that stopped us from advancing, and wrong behaviors and practices sometimes closed our eyes and ears, but we’ve overcome those to come to this point.”
Later, the two men emerged for a brief stroll along a second-floor balcony of the resort. They then held an expanded meeting with top aides, and shifted their discussions to a working lunch. The menu included Korean stuffed cucumber and beef short rib confit.
Drama surrounding the event heightened in the hours before the leaders greeted each other, as the two sides shifted their schedules. After Kim made clear that he would be leaving Singapore by the end of the day, the White House announced that Trump would depart in the evening after delivering a news conference at about 4 p.m. local time.
Trump has said that he would be willing to stay longer and potentially stretch the summit out over two days depending on how talks were proceeding. White House spokesman Raj Shah said Trump’s schedule change wasn’t in response to Kim, but instead due to the quick-moving negotiations between the two sides.
Top aides on both sides spent much of the night trying to negotiate terms, including any potential statement that will emerge, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The communique was still being worked out as early as Tuesday morning before Trump departed for the summit.
Hours before the meeting’s start Trump tweeted that final staff meetings between the two sides “are going well and quickly...but in the end, that doesn’t matter. We will all know soon whether or not a real deal, unlike those of the past, can happen!”
“The fact that I am having a meeting is a major loss for the U.S., say the haters & losers,” Trump tweeted about three hours before the summit. “We have our hostages, testing, research and all missle launches have stoped, and these pundits, who have called me wrong from the beginning, have nothing else they can say! We will be fine!”
Trump was joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Chief of Staff John Kelly. Kim was accompanied by North Korean Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and former Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong.
Trump wants the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Kim is seeking a security guarantee -- and possibly a peace treaty -- and the removal of the U.S.’s nuclear umbrella protecting allies South Korea and Japan.
Kim has rejected calls to unilaterally give up his weapons in return for economic aid, and instead has proposed a step-by-step denuclearization process. His public statements and state-run media indicate he wants a deal to ease sanctions, but that he won’t give up his nuclear weapons until he feels safe enough to retain power without them.
Pompeo on Monday drew a firm line, saying the U.S. plans to keep sanctions in place until North Korea eliminates its nuclear weapons capability. Complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization, he told reporters, “is the only outcome that the United States will accept.”
Yet the top U.S. diplomat added Trump is ready to offer “unique” guarantees to ease the regime’s concerns about giving up a nuclear arsenal that provides a deterrent against foreign adversaries while also serving as a key point of national pride.
The summit has drawn thousands of journalists to the Asia city-state. On Monday night, Kim took a surprise late-night tour of downtown Singapore, strolling along the harbor as reporters and residents shouted his name and snapped pictures with their phones.
Just meeting with Trump will be a diplomatic accomplishment for Kim, who has emerged from isolation in recent months and rapidly increased his outreach to other world leaders.
By sitting down with an American president -- a longtime goal of North Korea’s government -- Kim’s regime is advancing its effort to establish its “reputation, respect, and credibility as a nuclear weapon state,” said Michael J. Green, senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Top members of Trump’s administration have said that the North Koreans wouldn’t receive any benefits before taking steps to denuclearize -- wary of falling into the same predicament that doomed previous agreements with the rogue regime.
But North Korea now deems itself “a nuclear state,” and insists the U.S. must end its “nuclear threats and blackmail” as a precondition for denuclearization, according to a statement last month from First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Kye Gwan.
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.