Japan's Abe Responds to Trump-Kim North Korea Meeting

"Japan has been supporting the U.S.-North Korea negotiation process since their Singapore meeting."

PM Abe says he hopes Trump's meeting with Kim Jong Un after #G20 could lead to further progress on denuclearization

The Group of 20 summit in Osaka ended Saturday with lofty language from powerful world leaders, but it was eclipsed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who agreed to restart trade talks with China and extended a surprise invitation for North Korea’s leader to meet him Sunday.

Despite the focus on Trump, the summit’s host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, declared the gathering a success.

“The G-20 nations, as the countries that lead the world economy, have a responsibility to squarely face global problems and to come up with solutions through frank dialogue,” Abe said in concluding the meeting.

“Now, with this ‘Osaka Declaration,’ we should try to tenaciously find, not the differences, but common ground among us, and, we hope, to continue our effort to sustain global economic growth,” he said.

In striving for common ground, however, the summit declaration finessed differences and yielded no major new initiatives.

Still, German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the fact that the leaders managed to hold the line on the issue of climate change, with 19 countries committing themselves to the Paris climate accord.

Only the United States dissented, reiterating Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement “because it disadvantages American workers and taxpayers.”

Merkel told reporters that “this process cannot be turned around.” She said some leaders in Osaka indicated they were willing to up commitments to curb greenhouse gases by aiming for “net zero” emissions by 2050.

Merkel also lauded the deal between the EU and the Latin American bloc MERCOSUR — also struck on the G-20 sidelines — to create the world’s largest free trade zone after 20 years of negotiations. The agreement includes a reference to the goals of the Paris accord.

Japan had pushed for the Osaka summit to become a landmark for progress on environmental issues, including tackling the global problem of plastic waste and recommitting to efforts to counter climate change.

Leaders said they’d “look into a wide range of clean technologies and approaches, including smart cities, ecosystem and community based approaches.”

The G-20 leaders have long sought to present a united front in promoting open markets and calling for smart policies to fend off threats to global economic growth. But the schisms over such issues as protectionism and migration are straining efforts to forge the usual consensus on a broad array of policy approaches and geopolitical issues.

The summit declaration did not take aim at protectionism but included a call for free, fair, non-discriminatory and open markets.

“Weren’t we originally seeking agreement on these principles? We need to go back to the original point so that we can remember what it was we were initially seeking,” Abe said. “This time, we managed to go back to this original point to come to agreeing on these important principles.”

Much of the spotlight of the two-day meeting focused on Trump.

Using Twitter, he raised a stir by inviting North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to shake hands during a visit the he plans to make to the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas on Sunday. “If Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”

North Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui responded by saying it was a “very interesting suggestion,” and the meeting, if realized, would serve as “another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations.”

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