The second meeting between United States President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un might take place in Vietnam, revealed a source with knowledge about the matter.
CNN quoted a senior administration official and a second source who stated that according to the current plan for the second summit between the two leaders, scheduled for the last week of February, will be held in the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang. The plan is being finalised, the source divulged.
The source further stated that Trump’s agenda during the meeting is still not concrete. The second meeting was announced by the White House on January 18 following discussions with Kim Yong Chol, North Korea’s lead negotiator on nuclear talks.
In the run-up to the second USA-North Korea summit, the United States’ Special Representative for North Korea will be travelling to Seoul on February 3 to hold meetings with his counterparts from both North and South Korea.
The Special Representative, Stephen Biegun, is slated to meet with South Korea’s Special Representative, Lee Do-hoon, in Seoul.
“Biegun will also have to follow up meetings with his North Korean counterpart to discuss next steps to advance our objective of the final fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and steps to make further progress on all the commitments the two leaders made in Singapore,” a statement issued by the US Department of State on Friday noted.
This comes right after Biegun assured Pyongyang that the United States was not interested in a regime change during an address at Stanford University on Thursday (local time).
“We’re not going to invade North Korea,” he had said, urging the elusive state to comprehensively declare all of its nuclear and missile programmes.
However, the American Special Representative also put forth that Washington had “contingencies” prepared in case negotiations fell through with Pyongyang.
The landmark summit between the USA and North Korea was held for the first time at Singapore’s Sentosa island in June last year. Leaders from both the nations, US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed on a spectrum of things, the most prominent being the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.