US President Donald Trump, flanked by UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, kicked off his UN meetings at an event on fighting the illegal drug trade (Nicholas Kamm)

United Nations (United States) (AFP) – President Donald Trump said Monday he expects to soon hold a second summit with Kim Jong Un as he returned to the United Nations with warm words for the North Korean leader whom he eviscerated last year.

Trump used his debut address to the UN General Assembly 12 months ago to threaten to “totally destroy” North Korea and belittled its leader as “rocket man”, prompting Kim to respond by calling the US president “mentally deranged”.

But speaking as he arrived at UN headquarters in New York for this year’s gathering, Trump hailed “tremendous progress” to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests and said that a year later it was a “much different time.”

“It looks like we’ll have a second summit quite soon,” he told reporters.

“As you know Kim Jong Un wrote a letter — a beautiful letter — asking for a second meeting and we will be doing that,” added Trump, who met with Kim in Singapore in June.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — who has visited Pyongyang three times — will preside over a Security Council meeting Thursday where he will brief members on how the administration can persuade the North to turn its back on nuclear weapons.

He will also defend the Trump administration’s use of sanctions to force change, which has seen Chinese and Russian companies punished for doing business in North Korea.

Skepticism remains about whether Kim has taken any concrete steps, but that seems unlikely to deter Trump from pushing toward a follow-up to the Singapore summit in June.

While relations with Kim have improved dramatically, leaders attending the annual assembly will hear how another of Trump’s adversaries, Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, remains a top target of the American president’s ire.

– Big drug problem –

Kicking off his meetings, Trump addressed “the world drug problem and a big problem it is” at an event that saw 130 countries pledge in general terms to step up action to fight the illegal drug trade and combat addiction.

In his 41-minute speech at the General Assembly in 2017, the US president made clear he wanted to turn the clock back on the last half-century’s growth of global rules and institutions, to return to the primacy of the nation-state.

His national security adviser, John Bolton, said that Trump would stress US defense of its sovereignty in his latest UN address on Tuesday. 

The UN’s number one financial backer, the United States has moved under Trump to cut funding to the world body, notably to peacekeeping missions that are key to the UN’s goal of promoting peace and security.

“The United Nations has tremendous potential and that potential is being met, slowly but surely,” Trump told the drug meeting attended by UN chief Antonio Guterres.

– Pressure on Iran –

While Trump will dial down the rhetoric against Kim, there seems to be little prospect of him doing likewise with Rouhani.

The US annoyed many of its allies in Europe by pulling out of a deal they jointly negotiated in 2015 that lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.

US allies in the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia, have, however, been delighted by Trump’s stance.

Bolton said the United States was seeking to ramp up pressure on Iran but not to overthrow the regime — an idea he supported before taking his job and reiterated recently by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is Trump’s personal lawyer.

“As I have said repeatedly, regime change in Iran is not the administration’s policy,” Bolton told reporters.

“We’ve imposed very stringent sanctions on Iran, more are coming, and what we expect from Iran is massive changes in their behavior,” he said.

On Wednesday, Trump will for the first time chair a Security Council meeting on non-proliferation that will focus heavily on Iran, likely triggering a clash with other big powers.

The White House has not completely closed the door on a Rouhani-Trump meeting, but in a weekend op-ed in The Washington Post, Rouhani charged that Trump’s offer of talks was not “genuine” and came with a list of “openly insulting preconditions.”

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday accused US allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of supporting Arab separatists allegedly behind an attack on a military parade last week that killed 24 people.

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