The decision to display North Korea’s flag alongside the American flag at the historic U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore gave power to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, according to a former Obama administration official.
“I must say I was a little taken aback by the North Korean flags and the American flags side by side,” Wendy Sherman, a top State Department official under former President Barack Obama who was the lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal, said on MSNBC Tuesday.
“I was a little taken aback by the North Korean flags and the American flags side by side … We aren’t equals to each other. This conferred power to Kim Jong Un that I don’t think he has yet earned.”
– Wendy Sherman, Fmr. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs pic.twitter.com/dKjAWIvpGz
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 12, 2018
“We really aren’t side by side,” she said. “We aren’t equals to each other, and this conferred power to Kim Jong Un that I don’t believe he has yet earned, in terms of the respect from the United States.”
“That’s something that comes through building that relationship,” Sherman added.
President Trump and Kim met in Singapore for several hours, after which they signed a broad agreement aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. Trump hailed the meeting as a sign that North Korea was finally ready to meet the demands of the world and eliminate its nuclear weapons program.
[Trump: ‘We’re prepared to start a new history’]
But Sherman said the joint statement that both Trump and Kim signed wasn’t nearly as specific as past efforts have been. She said several deals had been reached over the past few decades that failed to go anywhere, after North Korea balked at allowing inspections of its weapons sites.
“We have not only been here before, but we have been here before with much greater specificity,” she said. “So [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo needs to go back and understand a little bit more about history.”
Republicans and even some Democrats have been critical of the Iran deal that Sherman negotiated. Trump abandoned that agreement last month, and argued it would actually give Iran a clear path for obtaining a nuclear weapon.
