The White House announced Friday that President Donald Trump would hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February as the two sides seek to jump-start nuclear talks that have bogged down since their historic first meeting last year.
The news came after Trump met for about 90 minutes in the Oval Office with Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief who has served as Pyongyang’s lead negotiator. White House aides disclosed no other logistics, but one location that has been strongly considered is Danang, Vietnam, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
“We’ve continued to make progress,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters after the meeting. She emphasized that the administration would “keep pressure and sanctions on North Korea until we see fully and verified denuclearization.”
The announcement reaffirmed Trump’s commitment to a strategy in which he has placed faith in his own negotiating skills to cut through years of mistrust and dead-end talks among lower-level diplomats and forge a deal for North Korea to relinquish a nuclear weapons program that analysts said can now reliably strike the United States.
(c) 2019, The Washington Post · John Hudson, David Nakamura, Simon Denyer
{Matzav.com}
