US, North Korea Preparing Trump-Kim Smmit

A US team is holding talks with North Korean officials to prepare a possible meeting between President Donald Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-un.

The talks in the village of Panmunjom, in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, is the latest sign that the summit could take place after all.

On Thursday Mr Trump called off the meeting – due in Singapore next month – citing the North’s “hostility”.

But both sides have since been working to get it back on track.

On Saturday Mr Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in held an unannounced meeting. Mr Moon said the North’s leader had “again made clear his commitment to a complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.

Mr Kim Jong-un later spoke of his “fixed will” that the summit should go ahead. Mr Trump said things were “moving along very nicely”.

The visit by the US delegation was first reported by the Washington Post later on Sunday. The team was led by Sung Kim, a former ambassador to South Korea, who was to hold talks with North Korean Vice-Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, the newspaper said.

The state department confirmed that the two sides had met at the border. “We continue to prepare for a meeting between the president and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,” state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

CNN said that the discussions were focused on the substance of the summit, while a separate US team in Singapore was dealing with the logistics.

The meeting would be the culmination of diplomatic efforts that began this year to defuse what had threatened to become a military confrontation between the nuclear-armed communist North and the South.

Source: BBC