SINGAPORE — President Trump cast his Tuesday summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as a ‘‘onetime shot’’ for the autocratic leader to ditch his nuclear weapons and enter the community of nations, saying he would know within moments whether Kim is serious about the talks.
Trump said Saturday he was embarking on a ‘‘mission of peace,’’ as he departed the Group of Seven meeting in Canada to fly to the summit site in Singapore.
Saying he has a ‘‘clear objective in mind’’ to persuade Kim to abandon his nuclear program in exchange for unspecified ‘‘protections’’ from the United States, Trump acknowledged that the direction of the high-stakes meeting is unpredictable, adding it ‘‘will always be spur of the moment.’’
‘‘It’s unknown territory in the truest sense, but I really feel confident,’’ he told reporters. ‘‘I feel that Kim Jong Un wants to do something great for his people and he has that opportunity and he won’t have that opportunity again.’’
‘‘It’s a onetime shot, and I think it’s going to work out very well,’’ he said.
Analysts believe that Kim will try to get Trump to agree on steps such as formally ending the Korean War and giving North Korea guarantees that it will not be attacked. He also is believed to favor a phased-in approach to denuclearization, and it is unclear whether Trump would consider that.
The meeting will be the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader. Unlike traditional summits between heads of state, where most of the work is completed in advance of a photo-op, US officials say the only thing certain ahead of these talks will be their unpredictability.
Raising expectations in advance of the meeting, Trump said the outcome will rely heavily on his own instincts.
The US president, who prides himself on his deal-making prowess, said he will know ‘‘within the first minute’’ of meeting Kim whether the North Korean leader is serious about the nuclear negotiations.
‘‘I think I’ll know pretty quickly whether or not, in my opinion, something positive will happen. And if I think it won’t happen, I’m not going to waste my time. I don’t want to waste his time,’’ Trump said.
‘‘This is a leader who really is an unknown personality,’’ Trump added of Kim. ‘‘People don’t know much about him. I think that he’s going to surprise on the upside, very much on the upside.’’
The summit meeting is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. local time Tuesday at the Capella Hotel on the resort island of Sentosa off Singapore’s southern coast. More than 2,000 reporters have been assigned to cover it.
The summit comes as Trump’s international negotiating skills have faced their toughest tests to date with mixed results. Tensions flared at the G-7 summit between Trump and US allies over his protectionist economic policies and decisions to exit the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord.
Trump rated his relationships with US partners as ‘‘a 10,’’ though erstwhile allies spent much of the weekend directly challenging Trump’s policy positions.
As he looks to the Kim meeting, Trump is taking a high-stakes risk in hopes of containing the increasingly challenging national security threats from North Korea’s advanced nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Seeing potential Nobel Peace Prize laurels and eyeing potential to show up his critics at home and abroad, Trump is granting Kim the international legitimacy he’s long sought in hopes of securing a legacy-defining accord.
‘‘He could take that nation with those great people and truly make it great,’’ Trump said. ‘‘That’s why I feel positive because it makes so much sense.’’
