Despite months of hard diplomacy, U.S. envoy Stephen Biegun didn't even get a seat at the negotiating table in Hanoi, where hawkish national security adviser John Bolton instead had the president's ear.
White House national security adviser John Bolton's last-minute role in influencing President Donald Trump's negotiations with North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un played a major role in the summit's ultimate failure to produce any agreements, experts have said.
President Donald Trump, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un and their respective delegations hold a bilateral meeting during the second U.S.-North Korea summit at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, February 28. Among those seated next to Trump are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, while U.S. special representative to North Korea Stephen Biegun is seated out of sight in a chair behind them.
"He's made it very clear that he doesn't believe in international agreements," John F. Tierney, a former Massachusetts representative who serves as executive director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told reporters Thursday. North Korea then reportedly raised the stakes to include sanctions relief, a deal breaker for Trump. The president would go on to say that the North Koreans"wanted sanctions lifted in their entirety," but in an extremely rare press conference organized at midnight Hanoi time—noon in Washington—North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho contended that he and his compatriots called for the removal of"partial U.N.
Then-Undersecretary of State for arms control and international security affairs John Bolton addresses a press conference at the U.S. embassy in Seoul, July 21, 2004. A year after championing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bolton urged North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un's father, the late Kim Jong Il, to follow the example of Libya and abandon their nuclear weapons development, saying at the time that Washington won't be"fooled again" by North Korea.
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