Moon to meet Trump ahead of apparent talks with North

SEOUL: President Moon Jae In will visit the United States this week for talks with President Donald Trump that will focus on ways to restart denuclearisation negotiations with North Korea, Yonhap news agency reported, quoting officials from Seoul’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae yesterday.

Moon will head to Washington on Wednesday for his two-day visit. He and Trump will meet Thursday (US time).

The scheduled meeting comes after Trump’s second and latest summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held in Hanoi in late February and ended abruptly without a much anticipated nuclear agreement.

What once seemed to be unprecedented talks between Washington and Pyongyang on completely ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons have since stalled with both sides now apparently looking to Seoul to help restart what has turned out to be an arduous and equally fragile process.

“The upcoming (South KoreaUS) summit comes as there is a need for consultation between the two countries to quickly revive the momentum for dialogue following the Hanoi summit,” Kim Hyun Chong, a deputy director of the National Security Office (NSO) told a press briefing.

The whole process to denuclearise North Korea began after Moon held a historic interKorean summit with the North Korean leader in April 2018.

The two have since met two more times, in May and September, with their latest summit held in Pyongyang.

On the same day his Hanoi meeting with Kim fell apart, Trump called Moon to ask for his help.

“While expressing disappointment over the failure to reach an agreement in the summit, President Trump reaffirmed his determination to resolve the issue through dialogue with North Korea in the future,” Cheong Wa Dae said of the telephone conversation earlier. — Bernama