Washington, Feb. 6 (AFP): US President Donald Trump on February 5 announced that his second summit with North Korea will take place later this month in Vietnam as he also reported headway in talks with the Taliban.
Delivering his annual State of the Union address to Congress after being politically battered by a partial government shutdown, Trump hailed his diplomacy with North Korea and seized on the drama of the setting to reveal his long-planned second summit with leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump said he would meet the elusive young leader on February 27 and 28 in Vietnam, although he did not specify the venue.
“Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped, and there has not been a missile launch in 15 months,” Trump told lawmakers assembled in the House chamber.
“If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea. Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one,” he said.
Trump met Kim in June in Singapore, the first-ever summit between leaders of the two countries that have never formally ended the 1950-53 Korean War, months after the US leader was threatening to obliterate North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests.
Since the summit, Trump has since mused that he and Kim have fallen “in love” and voiced eagerness to meet him, although critics say that North Korea’s promises remain vague.
The two leaders in Vietnam will need to work out the meaning of North Korea’s promise in Singapore of “denuclearization,” with Kim envisaging an end to all weapons in the peninsula rather than quickly giving up the arsenal built for decades by the totalitarian dynasty.
The US special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Biegun, heads Wednesday for talks in Pyongyang on preparing the summit.
