Singapore: US, North Korea officials meet for final summit preparations
North Korean and US negotiators met in Singapore today for final preparations on the eve of an unprecedented summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, seeking to bridge the gaps over Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal. Tomorrow's meeting will be the first between a sitting US President and North Korean leader, whose nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions raised global concerns and saw tensions soar. Here's more.
Summit has raised hopes for peace treaty
The meeting is an extraordinary turnaround from the rhetoric of last year when Trump threatened the North with "fire and fury" and Kim dubbed him a "mentally deranged US dotard". The summit has raised hopes of progress towards a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, the last festering legacy of the Cold War after hostilities only stopped with an armistice.
North Korea is demanding unspecified security guarantees
But Pyongyang is demanding unspecified security guarantees and the end of "hostile policy" towards it. It hasn't made clear what concessions it is offering over the nuclear arsenal to defend against a US invasion. The North, which has been subjected to increasingly strict sanctions by UN Security Council, has made promises of change in the past, only for the agreements to collapse later.
Committed to complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of N-Korea: Pompeo
"We remain committed to the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted. Trump, the mercurial US leader, has whipsawed on expectations for the meeting, signaling that it could be the beginning of a "process" of several meetings. He would know "within the first minute" whether an agreement would be possible, he added.
Mike Pompeo's early morning tweet
Meeting might be a more media event, warns analyst
The North has sought such a meeting for decades, where its leader will meet a US President as an equal rather than as the representative of a pariah state. Bruce Klingner of Heritage Foundation said, "It risks being more of a media event than an occasion of substantial progress from the two sides were negotiating in Singapore to try to address their differences."
