‘US dotard’ gives Kim one shot for peace

North Korean and US negotiators met in Singapore Monday for final preparations on the eve of an unprecedented summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, seeking to bridge the gaps over Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.

Tuesday’s meeting will be the first between a sitting US president and a leader of North Korea, whose nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions have raised global concerns and seen tensions soar.

It is an extraordinary turnaround from the rhetoric of last year, when Trump threatened the North with “fire and fury” and Kim dubbed him a “mentally deranged US dotard”.

The summit has raised hopes of progress towards a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, the last festering legacy of the Cold War, after hostilities only stopped with an armistice.

But Pyongyang is demanding as yet unspecified security guarantees and the end of what it calls a “hostile policy” towards it, and has not made clear what concessions it is offering over the nuclear arsenal it calls its “treasured sword” to defend against a US invasion.

“We remain committed to the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted.

The mercurial US leader has whipsawed on expectations for the meeting, signaling that it could be the beginning of a “process” of several meetings, only to call it a “one-time shot” for peace as he embarked for Singapore.

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