Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un next month, there is deep skepticism in Washington as to whether Pyongyang will seriously commit to ridding itself of nuclear weapons through a robust verification process.

In a meeting Wednesday with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Pyongyang, Kim said the summit, set for June 12 in Singapore, will be "a historic meeting for the excellent first step toward promotion of the positive situation development in the Korean Peninsula."

But as in the cases of previous nuclear negotiations that ended with broken promises by North Korea, more than a few analysts suspect Kim's engagement with Trump may be yet another tactical attempt to buy time and win concessions without actually eliminating his hard-won nuclear arsenal.

Citing Kim's remark last month that no nuclear tests or test-launches of intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missiles were necessary because the work for mounting nuclear warheads had already been finished, Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation said, "That's far different from abandoning testing as a prelude to ridding itself of nuclear weapons or ICBMs."

"By adopting a stance of mutual arms control rather than unilateral North Korean denuclearization, Kim may attempt to put the onus on U.S. possession of nuclear weapons," said Klingner, the senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Washington think tank. "For Kim, this has the added benefit of helping North Korea gain formal recognition as a nuclear weapons state."

(U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, L, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un)
[KCNA-UPI]

While U.S.-led sanctions have apparently bitten, Kim seems to believe he has leverage to negotiate due to the progress he has made in developing a nuclear-tipped ICBM capable of hitting the United States, according to some analysts.

Additionally, North Korea, believing that nuclear weapons are essential for regime survival, proclaimed itself a "nuclear state" in a revision of its Constitution in April 2012, only four months after Kim came to power following the death of his father, longtime ruler Kim Jong Il.

In a meeting on April 20, Kim's Workers' Party of Korea decided to suspend nuclear tests and ICBM launches and shut down the North's only known underground nuclear test site, a move critics see as an attempt to win an easing of sanctions.

North Korea has announced nuclear and missile moratoriums before, only to rescind them. The latest moratorium also falls far short of demands from the international community that Pyongyang dismantle all its weapons of mass destruction, missiles and related facilities in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way.

Trump has said on numerous occasions that he will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations, asserting they gave North Korea too many concessions despite the country not abandoning its nuclear ambitions. He vowed to maintain maximum pressure and sanctions until the North denuclearizes.

Underscoring a gap between Washington and Pyongyang over a process and pace for denuclearization, Kim told Chinese President Xi Jinping this week that he wants "phased and synchronous measures" and hopes to "eventually achieve denuclearization and lasting peace on the peninsula," according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.

In contrast, the Trump administration has been advocating a complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea, and is reportedly eyeing a timeline of six months to a year for completion.

"We're not going to relieve sanctions until such time as we achieved our objectives," Pompeo told reporters Tuesday. "We are not going to do this in small increments, where the world is essentially coerced into relieving economic pressure."

Kim was also quoted by Xinhua as telling Xi during talks Monday and Tuesday in Dalian, northeastern China, that North Korea would give up its arsenal if "relevant parties," in an apparent reference to the United States and its allies, drop "hostile policies" and remove "security threats" against the country.

North Korea has linked its pursuit of nuclear weapons to what it calls "hostile" U.S. policy, referring to the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea and the provision of "nuclear umbrella" defense to Seoul in line with their bilateral alliance.

North Korea has traditionally called for removing the U.S. military presence and nuclear deterrence from South Korea as part of its definition of "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," while the United States, South Korea and Japan define denuclearization as Kim giving up his nuclear weapons.

Experts say they find it difficult to imagine Kim would bargain away the arsenal Pyongyang has developed for decades and which he calls a "treasured sword" for its role as a necessary deterrent against what the North perceives to be U.S. nuclear threats.

"From my perspective, the North Koreans are not going to denuclearize within a sixth-month, one-year time frame, and there is still too huge a gap between our definition of denuclearization and theirs," said Jung Pak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

"So I think that's going to be something hopefully that they can work out before the meeting actually happens," Pak said.