perestroika in the soviet union or banning part apartheid in south africa or something like that and north korea could get that thinking out the state the party in the state has control of the media we would hear from diplomats you would hear it in the media there's no sign of this they believe that power is the only security the instrument for security in a menacing international system so even though there are some vague statements by kim jong un and his predecessors father and his grandfather that they would denuclearize it's basically the concept of this global zero when everyone else denuclearize is in this kind of idealistic term they frozen some parts of the program they've invited inspectors in i think maybe they were hedging in the early ninety's but it's very clear the steps that they've taken that they are serious about wanting to have these capabilities they've developed them they possess them and i don't think they're ready to abandon these instruments of power ok thanks

them for the moment thanks very much we'll come back to you as we hear from donald trump and as the course of the morning's events unfold thanks very much let's just take this opportunity to remind you of what the press house white house press secretaries are saunders said just a short while ago in a statement she said the two leaders that's conjunction donald trump discussed various ways to advance the need to arise ation and economic driven concepts but no agreement was reached at this time but there was spec to look forward to meeting in the future about not what the mask has to james bases. in hanoi so no joint agreement james we are expecting this press conference from donald trump who will learn an awful lot more about what's going on very much of a surprise of all these developments that this morning. yes because the bar has been set reasonably low president trump been making the case that there was plenty of time here and setting expectations low the white house

said there would be some sort of signing ceremony and instead of a signing ceremony on some sort of agreement you have those words that you just read a holding statement a face saving statement yes they say it was very good and constructive yet the table was set for lunch and no one came to lunch there wasn't even enough goodwill to go and sit down at the end of a meeting and have a meal together joining me now christopher green from the international crisis group an expert on the korean peninsula we're going to hear president trump in a minute we're going to hear more details but europe's initial assessment given that the white house wasn't expecting to solve all of this problem but even with that low bar they didn't reach it as you say we're about to hear from president time so don't want to put words in his mouth but it does look like this is a significant failure people weren't expecting too much president tom had attempted to ratchet expectations down and those expectations were not met so it's

a problem but the two sides of agreed keep talking we know that they see this is a longer term process so whilst we as journalists and experts may have wanted results there is still time so no actual progress but still we've got a process going forward with this in terms of what they could have done there are things they could have agreed to do we heard the two leaders both asked about not quite diplomatic relations but the first step having a few diplomats in each other's capitals liaison offices both seem broadly in agreement with that we assume they could both of said they'd work towards a formal end to the korean war why could we not have a statement like that do you think i think because if you can't walk away with something on the denuclearization issue that is a very hard sell back in washington d.c. so without that if the statement emerged with concrete decisions on some other issues but nothing remotely sensible on that would cause a problem for president tom now let's talk about president trump and his inner

circle know let's listen to president trouble first and talk about it afterwards. then incredible. people. would. reasonably attractive news from pakistan and india they've been going at it and we've been involved in trying to have them stop and we have some reasonably decent news i think hopefully that's going to be coming to an end it's been going on for a long time decades and decades there's a lot of dislike unfortunately so we've been in the middle trying to help them both out see if we can get some organisation and some peace and i think probably that's

going to be happening we have venezuela as you know has been very much in the news and we're sending supplies supplies are getting through a little bit more it's not easy it's hard to believe somebody would say let's not do it what difference would that make except it's great for his people to let it get through but we're sending a lot of supplies down to venezuela people are starving to death now and you would really think that the man in charge currently would let those supplies get through we are getting them into some of the cities and some of the areas that need them the most and it's not an easy job it's very difficult actually on north korea we just left chairman kim we are really i think a very productive time. we thought and i thought and secretary pompei o. felt that it wasn't

a good thing to be signing anything i'm going to let mike speak about it but we literally just left we spent pretty much all day with kim jong who is. he's quite a guy and quite a character and i think our relationship is very strong but at this time we had some options and at this time we decided not to do any of the options and we'll see where that goes but it was. it was a very interesting two days and i think actually it was a very productive two days but sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times and i'll let mike speak to that for couple of minutes plus. and thank you mr president we had been working our teams the team that. i brought to bear as well as the north koreans for weeks to try to develop a path forward so at the summit we could make a big step a big step along the way towards what the two leaders had agreed to back in

singapore in june of last year we made real progress and indeed we made even more progress when the two leaders met over the last twenty four thirty six hours unfortunately we didn't get all the way we didn't get to something that that ultimately made sense for the united states of america i think chairman kim was hopeful that we would we asked him to do more he he was unprepared to do that but i'm still optimistic i'm hopeful that the teams will get back together in the days and weeks ahead and continue to work out it's a very complex problem we've said since the beginning that this would take time our teams have got to know each other better we know what the limits are we know where some of the challenges are and i think as we continue to work on this in the days and weeks ahead we can make progress so that we can all to move that she what it is that the world wants which is to denuclearize north korea to reduce risk for the american people the people all the around the world i wish we could have got a little bit further but i'm very optimistic that the progress that we made both in the run up to this summit as well as the progress that the two leaders made over

these past two days put us in position to get a really good outcome and president chairman kim both felt good that they had made that progress but couldn't quite get along the lot along the line any further to make a deal that would have been bigger at this point i hope will do so in the weeks ahead thank you mr president. major news. this process been more difficult than you thought and was the north korean demand for lifting of some sanctions the real sticking point here in that you are not want to do that and they did and it was about a sanctions when the various third summit was to present basically they wanted these sanctions lifted. in their entirety and we couldn't do that they were willing to do you know go 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 with all the sanctions that are currently in existence remains are there are in place you know i was watching as so a lot of you folks over the weeks of said no we've given up we haven't given up anything and frankly i think we'll end up being very good friends with chairman kim and with north korea and i think they have tremendous potential i've been telling everybody they have tremendous potential unbelievable potential but we're going to see but it was about sanctions i mean they wanted sanctions lifted but they weren't willing to do an area that we wanted they were willing to give us areas but not the ones we wanted john. as we as we know i mean there's an incredibly complex set of issues that are a play here in terms of lifting the sanctions and what denuclearization is but did you get any distance toward sort of what kim's vision of denuclearization is

because we do is there is there is a lot of. line of thinking that he wants to keep some nukes you know i mean would you allow him to do that and if you well i don't i don't you know i don't want to comment i don't want to comment on that exactly but he has a certain vision and it's not exactly our vision but it's a lot closer than it was a year ago and i think you know eventually we'll get there but for this particular visit we decided that we had to walk and we'll see what happens. look we have a gentleman nobody's ever heard of that was sean hannity what are you doing here sean hannity sure let him do a question and i'll get john. with you soon. if he wants the sanctions completely off and you want more on denuclearization how can you bridge that gap between now and the next. it will be bridged i think at some at

a certain point but there is a gap we have to have sanctions and he wants to deano but he wants to just two areas that are less important in the areas that we want to we know that we know the country very well believe it or not we know every inch of that country and we have to get what we have to get because that's a big that's a big give us show on please. i work in radio and t.v. the my son is the president thank you mr secretary good to see you. mr president you can elaborate a little bit more. we have some history president reagan walked away in reykjavik lot of condemnation at the time and it ended up working out very well in the end for the united states was this mostly your decision or and what what message do you want to send chairman kim as he's listening to this press conference about the

future and your relationship or you don't i don't want to say it was my decision because what purpose is that. i want to keep the relationship and we will keep the relationship we'll see what happens over the next period of time but as you know we got our hostages back there's no more testing and one of the things importantly that chairman kim promised me last night is regardless he's not going to do testing of rockets and. nuclear not going to do testing so i trust him and i take him at his word i hope that's true but in the meantime we'll be talking mike will be speaking with his people he's also developed a very good relationship with the people really the people representing north korea i haven't spoken to prime minister rabin yet i haven't spoken to president moon south korea but we will and will tell them it's a process that is moving along but we just felt it wasn't appropriate to sign an

agreement today we could have i just felt it wasn't very appropriate you know jonathan. thank you mr president to two questions if i may first did you learn anything new about chairman kim a through this meeting and secondly of course while this was going on the drama back in washington your former lawyer michael cohen who worked for you for ten years office right next to yours radio five years of trump tower he called you a liar a con man a racist what's your response to michael cohen well it's incorrect and you know it's very interesting because i tried to watch as much as i could i was unable to watch too much because i've been a little bit busy but i think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing they could have made it two days later or next week and it would

have been even better they would have had more time but having it during this very important summit is sort of incredible and he lied a lot but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing he said no collusion with the russian hoax and i said i wonder why he didn't just lie about that too like he did about everything else somebody lied about so many different things and i was actually impressed that he didn't say well i think there was collusion for this reason or that he didn't say that he said no collusion and i was . get a little impressed by that frankly could have free could have gone all out he only won about ninety five percent instead of one hundred percent but the fact is there is no collusion and i call it the witch hunt that should never happen to another president this is so bad for a country so bad you look at this whole hoax that's called the russian witch hunt and now add the word hoax it's a very very bad thing for a country but. i was impressed with the fact that he went you know because the most

important question up there was the one on collusion and he said he saw no collusion so we'll see what happens but it was a pretty shameful i think yes ma'am place place not presidential and i had were about one of you instead of three well actually i do have a microphone i guess. here's me excuse me person in the front go ahead. no no no no i'm not you choose me here will get you thank you thank you president town resign and you think once on television what was the atmosphere like when you walk away from the negotiation table and i think it was very good very friendly this was in a walk away like you get up and walk out now this was very friendly we shook hands we you know there's a there's a warmth that we have now i hope that stays i think it will but we are you know

we're positioned to do something very special has been going on for many decades this isn't me you know this was this should have been solved during many presidential runs and you know people talked about it they never did anything i get a kick out of so many people from past administrations telling me how to negotiate when they were there in some cases for eight years they did nothing but i think the relationship was very warm and when we walked away it was a very friendly walk mike you might want to speak to that for a sec. no i agree i talked with my counterparts as well but we hope we do more but everyone's very focused on how we continue to build on this we are certainly closer today than we were thirty six hours ago we were closer then than we were a month or two before that so real progress was made i think everyone had hoped we could do just a little bit better but the departure was with an agreement that we would continue to work on what has been an incredibly difficult problem both sides are resolved to

achieve it and everyone walked away with in that spirit and mad u.n. chairman kean are from very different political system you are from different generations and what is a very different system i would say that's why how would how do you find you guys in common because we thought we just like each other i mean we have a good relationship yeah it's a totally different system to put it mildly but we like each other a good relationship go ahead in the back go ahead and mr president do you think it was premature to have held the summit when all these things had not being tied down i mean in the white house that you last night it said signing an agreement today and i wonder whether it is a follow up question whether you can just sketch out what the next few months look like and you always have to be prepared to walk i could've signed an agreement today and then you people would have said what a terrible deal what a terrible thing he did you know you have to be prepared to walk and you know where there was a potential we could assign something to that could have one hundred percent side

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. yes please go ahead go ahead go ahead go first go. you have to speak up and. i'm a reporter from south korea and i appreciate your effort to advance the nuclear ization in korean peninsula and could you elaborate on the options and the various ways that you discussed with chairman kim to advance the nuclear is. just best we discussed many ways and the nuclear ization is a very important it's a very important word become a very well used word and a lot of people don't know what it means but to me it's pretty obvious we have to get rid of the nukes i think he's got a chance to have one of the most successful countries rapidly to on earth incredible country incredible location your repertoire in if you think of it you

have on one side russia and china and on the other you have south korea and you're surrounded by water and among the most beautiful shorelines in the world there's tremendous potential in north korea and i think he's going to lead it to a very important thing economically i think it's going to be an absolute economic power here sky have close go ahead joe. president david sanger the new york times i noted six months ago when you spoke or eight months ago in singapore you said if you didn't have something in six months we should come back in and ask you about it in that time you have seen chairman kim increase the number of missiles he's produced in continue to produce more nuclear material and that's been a pressure point on you because he's showing of the arsenals getting larger while this is going on well some people david are saying that and some people are denying

that they have shots from above way above and some people are saying that and some people aren't but i could have taken that out kid a but i think you and others would have said we didn't get enough for what we'd be giving so and i say you know now if we go we're partners with a lot of countries on this if you think about it with the sanctions we have a whole big partnership with the united nations and many countries including russia china and others and then of course south korea is very important to this whole thing in japan i don't want to do something that is going to violate the trust that we've built up we have a very strong partnership so can you just give us a little more detail did you get into the question of actually dismantling the young gun a duplex yes does he seem willing alternately totally take all of that out sure does he just wants all the sanctions off or he would do that but he wants the sanctions for that and as you know there's plenty left after that and i just felt

it wasn't good bike and i spent a long time negotiating and talking about it to ourselves and just i felt that that particular as you know that facility while very big it wasn't enough to do what we were doing so he was willing to do young gun but you wanted more than that i assume we had to have more than that you know we had to have more than the uni's or other things that you haven't talked about that you haven't written about that we found and we have to have that was done. a long time ago but the people did know about including and you're right we put out a second uranium enrichment plant exactly and we brought many many points up that i think they were surprised that we knew but we had to do more than just the one level because if we did the one level and we gave up all of that leverage has been taking a long time to build so when i want to take it i know early to take out that second day that i want to take off the sanctions so badly because i want that country to grow that country has got such potential but they have to give up or we could have

done that deal mike you want to speak to that. only david there are also timing and sequencing issues that were associated with that as well which we didn't quite get across the finish line as well but remember too even that facility even the young the on facility and all of its scope which is important for sure still leaves missiles still leaves warheads and weapons systems i'm so there's a there's a lot of other element that we just couldn't get to and the listing of all of us are in and a declaration a saucer all of those things we couldn't quite get there today right. thank you mr president q i just want to clarify when you talk about what you would be willing to give up all of the sanctions for or are you still thinking that you want north korea to give up everything to do complete verifiable well i don't want to say to you live yang sions you know it's a good question i don't want to say that to you because i don't want to put myself in that position from the standpoint of negotiation but you know we want

a lot to be given up and were given up and we'll have to you know we'll be helping them along economically us and other cut many other countries are going to be helping they're going to be in there they're prepared to help i can tell you japan south korea i think china so many i'm speaking of china we're very well on our way to doing something special but we'll see i mean i am always prepared to walk i'm never afraid to walk from a deal and i would do that with china to have it didn't work are you concerned if you're not able to reach an agreement that the testing will start again or that in that while all of this time well he said to continuing to develop their program he said the testing will not start he said but he's not going to do testing of rockets or missiles or. anything having to do with nuclear and all i can tell you is that's what he said and we'll see yes go ahead let's go to a place in the back read in the road thank you mr president thank you jessica stone

from cd t.n. i have a question about china as you were talking about. you talk about china being willing potentially to help economically and the fact that you talk well talk to presidents moon and prime minister ave how would you just private china's role in facilitating the engagement that's happened so far between pyongyang and washington i think china's been a big help bigger than most people know on the borders you know ninety three percent of the goods coming into north korea come through china but there's a great power there that the same time i believe i happen to believe that north korea is calling its own shots and not taking orders from anybody he's for a strong guy and they're able to do things that are pretty amazing but ninety three percent still come in from china china has an influence and china's been a big help and russia has been a big help too as you know there's a pretty small part of the border but nevertheless significant about twenty eight miles and things can happen there too and they've been

a help. us. thanks president gentian with changing media group up china. meeting with chairman king this morning and yesterday did the topic up china come up if so what can you share with us today and you probably will have the and off barrel sunny thing in march chinese president xi jinping what would you like accomplished with your agenda we got in china at that time and he did talk about china today a lot and he's getting along with china and so are we and we are you know where we are right now you look at what's happened to our country we've picked up trillions and trillions of dollars of net worth our stock market is almost at its all time high our economy is incredible our unemployment numbers are among the best we've ever had in our history individual groups like african-american women and you

just take a look at any group hispanic you saw that just came out the best in history african-american best in history so many different numbers are coming out so good so we have the strongest economy probably possibly that we've ever had. she had chrysler just announced that they're going to spend four point five billion dollars right next to detroit and michigan they're building a tremendous plant it's actually an expansion of of another plant it's going to be it's going to double up their jobs and even more than that a lot of great things are happening and with china they're having some difficulty as you know but i think that a lot of the difficulty is because of the tariffs that they're having. and in addition to that we're putting a tremendous amount of money you saw a trade deficit down last month there was trying to find out why what would take in a lot of tariff money and it's going right to the bottom line and it has reduced the trade deficit so we'll see what happens with china i think i think we have a very good chance there are their numbers are down but i don't want that i want

their numbers i want them to do great but we've been losing. anywhere from three hundred to five hundred billion dollars a year with china for many many years and again like other things many presidents should have done this before me and nobody did so we're doing it. go ahead go ahead. right here this gentleman chad i carol from n.k. need specialist north korea knees but what's your message for president moon who's effectively reach the gloss feeling as far as into korean cooperation is can send you to thank us and what's next for us our game military drills well i like president moon very much we have a great relationship believe it or not i have a great relationship with almost every leader out of people find that hard to understand but i do. but some take advantage of our country like you wouldn't

believe in when when they know i know it which i know in every case maybe it sort of freezes them up a little bit but we do we have a lot of good relationships we'll be calling president moon very soon soon as i get by the phone on the plane and he'll be one of the first calls i'll be calling prime minister abi of japan telling them about where we are and what we're doing but i'll be making those calls don't he's working very hard president moon is working very hard he'd love to see a deal and he's been very helpful ok thank you. yes. thank you mr hurst i'm. a reporter from global the global times trying to look to the what you expect in china to do in the next step to mediate your division should with the most korea think to use china to what we do i mean china has been very helpful president xi is a great leader he's

a highly respected leader all over the world especially in asia and he's helped us mike i would say has helped us a lot we've. actually called him just recently to say hey you know whatever you can do in this but he has been very helpful at the border and he's been very very helpful with i think north korea generally could be a little more helpful probably but he's been he's been excellent. place you know. maybe how inexpensive difference thanks mr president. could you did you commit with chairman king if you came to a next summit during our harm ok we'll see if it happens it happens that i have not committed they are at this point some would say nuclear power do you accept north korea's nuclear armed state at least for the time being and are you thinking about re-imposing the military exercises with south korea or do you keep in

a freeze or you know the military exercises i gave that up. quite a while ago because it costs us one hundred million dollars every time we do it we fly these massive bombers in from guam and when i first started a certain general said oh yes or we fly men from guam it's right next to a woman right next door seven hours away and then they come and they drop millions of dollars of bombs and then they go back and but we would spend i mean we spent hundreds of millions of dollars of those exercises and i hated to see it i thought it was unfair and frankly i was sort of of the opinion that south korea should help us with that you know we're protecting south korea i think they should help us with that so those exercises are very expensive and i was telling the generals i said look you know exercising is fun and it's nice and they play they play the war games and i'm not saying it's not. necessary because at some levels it is but in other

levels it's not but it's a very very expensive thing and you know we do have to think about that too but when they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on those exercises we don't get reimbursed we're spending a tremendous amount of money on many countries protecting countries that are very rich that can certainly afford to pay us and then and those countries by the way and those countries know that it's not right but nobody's ever arrested before but i've asked them and we're doing we're gaining a lot of money we've picked up over one hundred billion dollars just in nato over the last two years one hundred billion dollars more has come in. and we doing that with a lot of countries you'll be seeing that a lot yes surplus yeah one second please. if thank you mr president you have a personal relationship and i believe vice president pence does with the family of our warm beer and i'm wondering you've talked about this week about kim jong un

being a my friend you called him on twitter you said you have a great relationship have you in singapore here confronted kim jong un about a war of yours that i have asked him to take responsibility what do you say to you and why do you call him your for i have and i have and i we i have talked about it and i really don't think it was in his interest at all i know the family very well i think they're an incredible family what happened is horrible i really believe something very bad happened to him and i don't think that. the top leadership knew about it and when they had to send him home by the way i got the prisoners back i got the hostages back and auto was one of the hostages but out ok back in shape that was not even to be talked about i find it i thought it was horrible now the others came back extremely healthy but oddo came back and any condition that was just are just terrible and i will i did speak about it and. i

don't believe that he would have allowed that to happen just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen those prisons are rough there are rough places and bad things happened but i really don't believe that he was he i don't believe he knew about it he fate that he tell you that he did not come down and tell you felt badly about it and you didn't make them he felt very barely knew the case very well but he knew it later and you know you get a lot of people a big country a lot of people and in those prisons in those camps you have a lot of people and some really bad things happened to otto some really really bad thing why are you what he tells me he tells me that he did know about it and i will take him at his word and yes ma'am go ahead please place your head in the back now in the back behind you thank you. mr president. you sergeant see i have you discussed the issue of possible inspections to north korean nuclear sites

to you and your negotiator going to have to even have to speak a little louder and one from where you from russia sputnik you seventy to discuss the issue of possible inspections to north korea and north korea's nuclear sites for talks with the chairman. what do you know. good inspections in iraq how it's going to affect interception of nations yes inspections on north korea you know it's bad would be able you know nor in the would be able to do that very easily we have that set up so we would be able to do that very easily the inspections are north korea will take place and will if we do something with them we have a schedule set up that is very good we know things that as david was asking about certain places and certain sites there are sites and people don't know about that we know about we would be able to do inspections we think very very successfully

yes ma'am please please yes go ahead please yes. thank you mr president a lot of people here by the way that big group of people. yes go ahead can use israel destroyed residents goodall owing this in gage meant when the north korea you're trying to bring peace to the middle east right the peace plan is about to be introduced in the near future and as you have mentioned before we hope we hope we're working hard on the peace plan and we hope it right really it do but as you mentioned before it will require israel to make compromises to the palestinians as far as you know is prime minister and if any are willing to make these compromises which are very much needed and the second question mr netanyahu is about to be indicted today with the corruption allegations do you wish to tell him something on this occasion well i just think he's been a great prime minister and i don't know about his difficulty but you tell me

something that you know people have been hearing about but i don't know about that i can say this that he's done a great job as prime minister is tough he's smart he's strong he is very defensive his military is. been built up a lot they buy a lot of equipment from the united states and they pay for it of course we give them tremendous as you know subsidy also. four billion dollars is a lot each year but they are they have been very very good really been incredible actually in many ways but there is a chance for peace between israel and the palestinians and you know it's interesting all my life i've heard that the toughest of all deals when they talk about tough deals we all like the us but the toughest of all deals would be peace between israel and the palestinians they say it's like the impossible deal i'd love to be able to produce it we'll see what happens you know we were paying the palestinians a lot of money and i ended that about two years ago because they weren't saying the

right things that i said why would we pay somebody that's not saying nice things about us and not really wanting to go to the peace table and they've been much better and we'll see what happened but i think you know really i think we have actually a good shot at peace between israel and the palestinian police sir. the president i'm from china my question has to do. it has the possible that's a further north korea and us the recession could be like us and then we cannot release in the future you have to go again do you believe you do still believe that eighty if he's the possible the relation between the u.s. and north korea in the future could it be like the relation between us and we can then yeah i think we're going to have yes we have very very good relations and by the way speaking of events in japan we have a lot of good things happening with japan we have trade talks started four years

japan has been sending millions and millions of cars in and as you know it's been a very fair situation for the united states we're starting trade talks with japan they actually started about three months ago and i think we'll have a very good deal for the united states but that's been a very unfair situation prime minister rabin understands that and that's fine yes replace back there. thank you mr person and change how we shall i mean to a group do you think the next meeting could be soon or by x. some time well i can't tell you i mean it might be sooner might not be for a long time i can tell you i would hope it would be soon but it may not be for a long time i could have done i could have done a deal today but it would have been a deal that would have been a deal that would have been something that i wouldn't have been happy about mike would not have been happy about we had some pretty big options but we just felt it wasn't appropriate and we really want to do it right yes in the back in the back

yes ma'am place. debbie edward i see the news which points did it become clear to you that you wouldn't be getting a deal here in hanoi the language from yourself and kim jong un was very positive last night and even this morning and therefore was a mistake you know i think your language was good all throughout the language has been good even now but. you know i don't go by language because we had probably the toughest language in the history of diplomacy if you call it diplomacy at the beginning and yet we became very friendly. i don't believe there was any tougher language ever than that but again this was something that should have been handled by other presidents long before me was and long before they had to kind of power that they have but it wasn't it should have been done by many i'm not just blaming the obama administration which by the way that it did nothing nothing absolutely nothing on north korea. it allowed things that happen and to happen that were very

inappropriate but i'm not blaming the obama administration i'm blaming many administrations something should have happened but i don't think the rhetoric spent better on initially it was horrible but now it's been very good one more how about you go ahead please place i have. to liable south korean media here i want to ask you you said that we did out practically no one when they will be north korean leader will be willing to come to the table and take the actions that are in required. if that's the case would the u.s. be willing to strengthen the sanctions and perhaps put the pressure on north korea to move forward i don't want to comment on that i can just tell you this that we have very strong sanctions i don't want to talk about increasing sanctions they are strong. they have a lot of great people in north korea that have to live also and that's important to

me and i would say this my whole attitude changed a lot because i got to know as you know chairman kim very well and they have a point of view also so i don't want to really talk about that i just think that hopefully for the sake of south korea for the sake of japan and frankly for the sake of china i was talking to president xi who really is a man that gets the respect of a lot of people. i say you can't love having a nuclear state great next to china. and he doesn't he really doesn't i would he would like to see that problem solved so that's a ladies and gentlemen i'm about to get on a plane and fly back to a wonderful place called washington d.c. so thank you very much thank you thank you for us thank you. sometimes you have to walk the u.s. president donald trump saying it was not a good thing to be signing and the thing today of course who were expecting

a joint agreement between him and north korean leader kim jong un there in hanoi in vietnam but he was asked what the sticking point was he said the north koreans wanted sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that but he did say kim jong un is willing to dismantle his nuclear program and has pointed out that he's pledged not to test any more nuclear weapons nor missiles but didn't commit to another summit and we did get news just about ten minutes ago that the north korean delegation has now left vietnam for china let's turn to our james bays he's been standing by listening to all the events there in hanoi so donald trump says it was the right thing to walk away today but did admit that there's a huge gulf that still needs to be bridged for these two sides to come to any agreement. he certainly putting

a brave face on it but in this half hour more than a half hour news conference pretty clear that the u.s. didn't want get what it wanted and was confronted by very tough negotiation from the north korean side we'll examine this all in a little bit more detail just a moment but let me just get through i think some of the other parts of this wide ranging news conference because it wasn't all about north korea some important news india pakistan first where he said there was some reasonably attractive news the u.s. had been in the middle trying to help that situation the other very important story of the last few days maybe important developments there secondly one mention of that congressional testimony on michael cohen he got the answer out a net and enter into question from a.b.c. news and then spent the rest of the news conference of voiding american reporters never before have so many asian and chinese reporters being called on in a white house news conference because he wanted to talk about the situation even

it's definitely not a win situation with regard to north korea but he certainly didn't want to talk about michael cohen making just a few comments about him being a liar and saying that he said there was no collusion on north korea it's clear that we're pretty much where we were to begin with which is no new progress the north korea koreans negotiated very hard indeed we seem to still have the existing deal from singapore which is they'll be no need clear testing by the north koreans no testing of their nuclear facilities no testing of their missiles and all the u.s. side he says it's not a concession to north korea's to save money but no military exercises which i'm sure will certainly be something that's not welcomed by some of his commanders in the pentagon who fear that they are losing their readiness on the ground let's talk about what was in terms of the new. could aspects of north korea's program what was

on the table what both sides positions were joining me is christopher green from the international crisis group we had to listen carefully through that news conference and as ever with president trump he ended up giving most of it away so let's start with what we think the north korean position was what were they demanding in these talks it looks like they were offering the young man research center obviously that was mentioned back in september that's not new but they weren't willing to give anything else and they had taken and bought new because i mean the i.a.e.a. was once even inspecting they're absolutely right but there maximalist position was that they wanted all the sanctions off which we've been hearing on the grapevine here in hanoi for a couple of days looks like there was no agreement on that obviously for the united states it would be a bad deal to trade all sanctions for younger and so both sides ended up taking a bit of a hard line on their positions and no agreement was reached president trump said there were papers ready to sign what do you think the u.s.

were potentially offering the north koreans this i think they were offering the modest sanctions relief but they wanted more and where there are other measures we saw when the reporters were gathered in front of the two leaders there was talks about liaison offices that wasn't mentioned in a news conference but that would have been uneven easy to give but both sides would go that's right but these would have been easy gives as you put it right those are not at the core the core is the sanctions relief versus nuclear program stuff neither side was satisfied so everything got shelved they say that they left on good terms he walked away but he shook his hand but there was actually a table laid for lunch to sit down together and they didn't even have the lunch which i suspect the north koreans might not be happy about might see that as a bit of an insult tell me how will both sides see this is there a damage to an overall process here i think there is a little bit of damage to the process but i think both of the leaders can go back to their respective capitals and. working quite strong they haven't told the whole

process and then they will begin again start the talks and then maybe at some point in the in the medium distance we'll see an agreement but we'll have to wayne's of course there's a more than one process going on at the same time in addition to the talks between the u.s. and north korea the intra korean talks between north korea and south korea and south korea's been way ahead of the u.s. talking about building joint railways joint railroads and ending the korean war and all these things how does this affect that separate korean process i think it creates a roadblock for the korean process a question was asked to president from by n.k. news about this very issue he didn't answer it he obviously doesn't have an answer to the problem of what does president moon do next or he gave us some platitudes about moon being a great guy who's working very hard so we'll have to wait and see how the south koreans are going to try and spin this christopher green from the international crisis group thank you very much indeed for joining me just before i leave you standing here seven months ago as with you michael called for rick who is from the

international crisis group another expert on north korea worth telling our viewers he is still a former canadian diplomat still in a chinese jail he was working as an analyst on these issues and he is being held by the chinese government still in detention just worth telling you he was doing exactly the same job with me here as christopher is today james bays and hanoi thanks very much. i know that this is al jazeera i'm laura kyle it's just a few seconds of eight that's three pm in hanoi sometimes you have to walk now those were the words of donald trump and explained why his vietnam summit with kim jong un ended abruptly but no agreement today meeting was aimed at convincing the north korean leader to give up his nuclear weapons. basically they wanted the

sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that they were willing to deal newco orange 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 but to sections that might pump a prize ation is closer than it was before the summit. we made real progress and indeed we made even more progress when the two leaders met over the last twenty four thirty six hours unfortunately we didn't get all the way we didn't get to something that that ultimately made sense for the united states of america i think chairman kim was hopeful that we would we asked him to do more he he was unprepared to do that but i'm still optimistic. things did seem promising this was kim jong un all starting

a question from the west and john this is something no one's ever seen before. their cameras ready to meet you here i. mean very mean you. know you kind of. you know building your down as you can and i'm not willing to bet that i won't be here right. now i'm going to be the best dancer you've ever. so what happened will shortly we'll be speaking again to james bays a white house correspondent is also live for us in hanoi also with brides and katrina who have foreign reactions from seoul and beijing's and it starts with kimberly and kimberly just bring us up to speed to just tell us how we reached this point which took everyone by surprise. yet it certainly did we very quickly in the hour before that press conference realized that things were deteriorating when an abrupt know was sent out we were watching very carefully

for the two leaders to take part in a lunch that did not happen instead we were told there was a change of plans and that the white house press secretary would be updating us very shortly then we were told that that agreement that we had expected to be signed at two pm local time here in ho no it was not being signed and that's when we knew that there was some trouble in terms of some sort of agreement when asked directly whether or not an agreement would be signed she would not answer and it was the conclusion of those in the white house press pool a very small pool of reporters that in fact it was not coming then we knew that the press conference was being moved up where it seemed as often is the case with this white house the president is his best messenger our believes that he is his best messenger and we heard from the president himself sometimes you have to walk away and this was one of those times now it appears that the sticking point being the young reactor the fact that this is

a reactor was certainly something it was being offered by north korea but in the eyes of the united states simply not enough revealed in that press conference by the secretary of state and also the u.s. president is the awareness of the hidden sites that have not been disclosed and there was an unwillingness to move further with regard to those sites and there was and i'm willing to. part of the united states to live sanctions because that was not forthcoming so this appears to be the sticking point we also heard the president now that he needs to reassure his allies that the japanese leader as well as the south korean leader about these developments but certainly i think it's important to note in all of this that the white house is trying to underscore that this is a success even though i don't think it will be played that way in the united states saying look at there still is no testing and we are still talking in the words of my home pale we're much closer than we were thirty six hours ago the question becomes whether that will satisfy the president's critics in the united states.

will now to distract him from those critics is going to be looking right back into the middle of michael cohen store testimony still been in should be only took one question on that issue. yeah he took one question and he brought up a point that has been brought up by many of the president's republican supporters in the united states and that is attacking democrats in the united states for holding that hearing with his longtime lawyer his fixer his a man who once said he would take the bullet for the president and then in turn testified before congress the president is a racist a liar a con man and potentially has been involved in in criminal activity the president calling that shameful answering only one question but then as socially of voiding reporters american reporters who may have wanted to follow up on that questioning it was important to note that the president said that in the words of air in his

opinion michael cohen live throughout his testimony but he only went ninety five percent underscoring that he didn't say that donald trump had been involved in any russian collusion that is certainly been a sore point for this president threw out his term he constantly talks about the russia investigation into whether or not there was collusion between his presidential campaign and russia as a hoax and a witch hunt something he underscored in this press conference once again ok kimberly is there from hanoi thanks very much will be returning to bring you more on the michael cohen testimony a little later in this program for this to. james basie's live for us in hanoi was of course listening in detail to that press conference and one thing that struck me james was that he donald trump said the he recognized that this issue north korean nuclear issue had gone on for many decades and that it wouldn't be sold instantaneously and it's quite

a change of tone isn't it from the man who thought that the prospect of a deal at the beginning of this trip was quote all some. absolutely he has throughout his time as president talked up his abilities as a deal maker now i think he's saying this is going to take quite a bit more time perhaps the realities of the complexity of doing a nuclear negotiation are dawning on this president he set quite low expectations for this summit and yet the white house still of hope to have some sort of agreement to sign instead of an agreement the talks ended abruptly there was supposed to be a lunch with both sides the table was laid the food was ready no one attended the lunch they've all gone off he says though it was polite he decided to walk away they declined to sign and the process continues so one set of talks

not yet a breakdown of the process i think the u.s. side perhaps will have been surprised by the very tough position from the north koreans coming into this first meeting was really a get to know you meeting in singapore but this the real detailed negotiation meeting and the north koreans really going for everything all the sanctions lifted and in one negotiation all at once that the u.s. you would expect would want all the nuclear program shut down all at once if they were going to get that so what we come out of this with i think is a situation where we are pretty much where we were before the process has taken a hit but it continues we have no nuclear testing and no testing of the missiles by north korea apparently kim has said that will continue and we have the u.s. side saying no military exercises on the korean peninsula something that will

frustrate some of the military commanders because they need to keep the pressure up on north korea and if they didn't move. to a war footing they need to be ready and that requires keeping your readiness and practicing and they haven't practiced for some time i think the positive perhaps of both sides is that there's a lot of people saying that both sides were conceding too much they get a lot of pressure at home particularly president trump that he was giving too much of an easy deal to the north koreans now i think he can say look i walked away i'm being very tough and i think about see some pictures of president convoy leaving the j w marriott hotel there in hanoi just about twenty minutes ago we got news that the north korean delegation has also left or is leaving vietnam for china what happens next james. well i think we've got two things to watch here because remember there being two parallel processes going on this was

all started the current diplomatic outreach by we think the south koreans although actually there's a possibility of going to meeting from the united nations who are not involved in this process at all jeffrey feltman the port former political chief went to north korea may have persuaded the north korean leader to talk about going to the winter olympics anyway it was the winter olympics about a year ago that started the process that the south koreans have been ahead on this they're talking about all sorts of reconciliation measures between the two koreas that process is still underway might slow a bit now going forward where do we go with the u.s. korea process the problem with that process i think is it's being done in a most unusual way what normally happens with the diplomacy is low level diplomacy they come up with a deal at the very end you bring in the two leaders to sign your deal it's worth looking back at the very very long torturous negotiations of the iran nuclear deal

i followed secretary kerry around all sorts of parts of the world parts of europe for meetings that president obama wasn't involved he didn't do the negotiations because the way it normally works it's done it's a lower level and that iran deal was signed the foreign minister level normally you leave your presidents out until the very end and then he signed the deal this is been done the complete reverse top down it's need the presidents to start it the president's to keep it going does it really mean the next time around are going to have to bring these two leaders back again to try and start this and can this process if you brought them both back again survive another failure absolutely zero here nasal suddenly be keeping an eye on both those leaders those that need to do anything in the usual manner james bays many thanks for joining us that from hanoi as tense daniel pinkston nouns in north korea expert and lecturer in international relations at train invest in seoul he joins us from the south korean capital so

daniel this vietnam summit has moved the process forward in any way. well that remains to be seen and many people are force disappointed there wasn't some breakthrough but james the diplomatic editor was correct in his report previous report that generally these processes work from the bottom up secretary pompei own president were clearly when they stated these are very difficult processes the agreement will be very complex but the working level experts have not had the opportunity and the time to do that work in to fulfill all of the required steps to draft a comprehensive agreement and i think the north koreans were stonewalling on this and wanted to get in the room with trump because he is. shown that he's vulnerable to being manipulated but fortunately in my view he did walk away if in fact it was going to be a bad deal it's better to walk away than to sign

a bad agreement so now it will go back down to the lower levels and hopefully the process will work out but the kind of information that was revealed today.