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US envoy to meet with North Korea again ahead of Trump-Kim summit
WASHINGTON, Feb 9, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – US President Donald Trump and North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for a second much-anticipated summit in
Hanoi, as preparations kick into high gear for the peace talks.
Trump announced the exact location on Twitter — only the country, Vietnam,
was previously known — for the follow-on to the leaders’ summit in Singapore
last year as he hailed “very productive” preparatory talks between diplomats
from the two countries.
“My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive
meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong
Un,” Trump said.
“It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward
to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!”
The US State Department said the special US envoy for North Korea will meet
again with Pyongyang officials ahead of the Trump-Kim talks — hours after he
returned to Seoul from talks in the North on the summit’s agenda.
In a statement, the State Department said talks during Stephen Biegun’s
three-day trip explored Trump and Kim’s “commitments of complete
denuclearization, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace
on the Korean Peninsula.”
Biegun landed at Osan US Air Base late Friday, foreign ministry spokesman
Noh Kyu-duk told AFP.
The State Department confirmed Biegun agreed to meet his North Korean
counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again before the leaders’ talks.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the summit and
Kim Jong Un appeared to make no mention of it during a meeting earlier with
the top brass of the Korean People’s Army.
As reported by state media, the meeting focused on the need to modernize
the military while maintaining party discipline in the ranks.
– Ending the Korean War? –
Biegun is expected to share details of his Pyongyang meetings with his
South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on
Saturday.
Attention will focus on whether the US team have offered to lift some
economic sanctions in return for Pyongyang taking concrete steps toward
denuclearization.
Discussions on declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War could also have
been on the table, with Biegun last week saying Trump was “ready to end this
war.”
The three-year conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving
the two Koreas still technically at war, with the US keeping 28,500 troops in
the South.
The US envoy was also likely to have discussed with his counterpart
protocol and security matters for the upcoming Trump-Kim summit.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the mercurial US and North
Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to
work towards “the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what
that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons will be needed
for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as “reality TV.”
BSS/AFP/SSS/0852 hrs