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Friday Sep 20, 2024
Thursday, 28 February 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Hanoi (Reuters): North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump met in Hanoi on Wednesday for their second summit, with the US president rejecting any suggestion he was walking back on US demands for North Korea’s denuclearisation.
Kim and Trump shook hands and smiled briefly in front of a row of their countries’ flags at the Metropole hotel in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
Trump told reporters he thought the talks would be very successful, and asked if he was “walking back” on denuclearisation, said “no”.
At their historic first summit in Singapore last June, Trump and Kim pledged to work toward denuclearisation and permanent peace on the Korean peninsula. North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict, with the Americans backing the South, ended in a truce, not a treaty.
Asked if he would declare a formal end to the Korean War, which North Korea has long called for, Trump said: “We’ll see.”
In the run-up to this summit, Trump has indicated a more flexible stance, saying he was in no rush to secure North Korea’s denuclearisation. He repeated that on Wednesday, saying while some people believed the talks should be moving more quickly, he was satisfied.
Trump has held out the prospect of easing sanctions if North Korea does something “meaningful”.
But some critics have said he appeared to be wavering on a long-standing US demand for complete and irreversible denuclearisation by North Korea, and risked squandering leverage if he gave away too much in the talks too quickly.
Kim said they had overcome obstacles to hold their summit.
“Now that we’re meeting here again like this, I’m confident that there will be an excellent outcome that everyone welcomes, and I’ll do my best to make it happen,” Kim said.
