Trump 'winging it' to blame for scuppering North Korea summit, says former White House official

Donald Trump is "winging it" on the international stage and his failure to lay the groundwork for a summit with North Korea is to blame for a breakdown of talks this week, a former White House official has said.

Victor Cha, who was dropped as Mr Trump's pick to be ambassador to South Korea earlier this year after he questioned the value of military threats against Pyongyang, said the president's decision to rush into talks "was probably a mistake" and "put us in the position where we are today".

In a letter to Kim Jong-un on Thursday, Mr Trump said he was pulling out of a planned summit in Singapore on 12 June because of the "tremendous anger and open hostility displayed” in a recent statement from North Korean officials. It came after a senior North Korean official dismissed remarks from the US vice president, Mike Pence, as “stupid”.

Mr Trump had "raised expectations greatly for a meeting and now pulled out of it, and nobody really knows what will happen next", Mr Cha told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He questioned "the manner in which Trump approached this, which was to be very abrupt and very spontaneous and agree to a meeting without really doing the necessary work in advance to ensure that would be successful".

Mr Cha suggested that "the unconventionality of Donald Trump" could one day prove an asset in breaking the decades-long deadlock with North Korea.

"On the other hand, the way in which he conducts himself, winging it and basically shooting from the hip, can lead us to problems like we have today, where we have a cancelled meeting," he added.

Meanwhile, the White House has suggested China was most to blame for the manner in which relations quickly broke down between the US and North Korea.

Mr Trump himself told reporters on Thursday that "the dialogue was good until recently, and I think I understand why that happened."

That, NBC quoted senior administration officials as saying, was a reference to meetings held between Kim Jong-un and President Xi Jinping. Mr Kim has travelled twice to Beijing in the last three months, his first and only foreign trips since coming to power in 2011.

Mr Trump was also asked about China during an Oval Office meeting with South Korea's President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday.

Then, he said: "I will say I'm a little disappointed because when Kim Jong-un had the meeting with President Xi in China, the second meeting ... I think there was a little change in attitude from Kim Jong-un. So I don't like that."

He added: "I think things changed after that meeting, so I can't say that I'm happy about it."

Mr Cha said there was little doubt China also played a role in the Singapore talks collapsing. A jealous Beijing "maybe wanted things to be slowed down so they wouldn't be cut out of any North Korea deal, and they probably want to play a central role in any future meeting of the parties," he suggested.

But the former White House policy adviser said there was a third factor which might indicate a waning of confidence in North Korea towards its leader.

Mr Kim is being judged not just on his apparent success in bringing forward the country's nuclear programme, but also on his ability to deliver economic growth.

"Hard-liners" underneath the supreme leader have been questioning the improvement of relations with the long-time enemy America, preferring instead to focus on an allegiance with Beijing.

The breakdown in talks "may not just have to do with China, but may also have to do with broader internal domestic struggles", Mr Cha said.