Investing.com - U.S. President Donald Trump said he had walked away from a nuclear deal at his summit with Kim Jong-un on Thursday because of unacceptable demands from the North Korean leader to lift punishing U.S.-led sanctions.
"It was all about the sanctions," Trump said during a post-summit news conference. "Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn't do that."
Trump said two days of talks in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi had made good progress in building relations and on the key issue of denuclearization, but it was important not to rush into a bad deal.
“They were willing to de-nuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that. So we continue to work and we’ll see, but we had to walk away from that particular suggestion. We had to walk away from that.”
“It wasn’t a good thing to be signing anything,” Trump said. “We had some options, and at this time we decided not to do any of the options, and we’ll see where that goes.”
"Sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times," he added.
The president said he had not committed to a third summit with Kim. Still, Trump described the talks as “productive,” and highlighted his relationship with his North Korean counterpart — “I think we’ll end up being very good friends.”
At the end of the day, though, Trump said he “would not have been happy about” any deal he saw on the table for Thursday’s talks.
“You always have to be prepared to walk,” Trump said. “I could have 100 percent signed something today — we actually had papers ready to be signed — but it just wasn’t appropriate. I want to do it right: I’d much rather do it right than do it fast.”
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