‘Summit – it’s on again’

President to meet Jong-un in S’pore after talks with N. Korean envoy

US president all set to meet Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12 for historic meet.

Washington: US President Donald Trump said he will meet North Korea’s Kim Jongun as originally scheduled on June 12 for a historic summit after extraordinary Oval Office talks with a top envoy from Pyongyang.

After more than an hour of discussion with Kim Yongchol, Trump told reporters that denuclearisation – and a formal end to the decadesold Korean war – would be on the table in Singapore.

But the US president warned that he did not expect to immediately sign a deal to bring a halt to the reclusive regime’s nuclear programme.

“I never said it goes in one meeting. I think it’s going to be a process, but the relationships are building and that’s very positive,” Trump said, after waving farewell to Kim’s the North Korean leader’s righthand man.

The Korean War has been largely frozen since an armistice ended hostilities, but not the underlying conflict, in 1953.

Since then, there have been occa sional clashes on the divided peninsula.

“We talked about ending the war. Historically it’s very important, but we’ll see. We did discuss that, the ending of the Korean War,” he said.

“Can you believe we’re talking about the ending of the war?”

Washington is determined that Jongun should agree to what US officials call the “complete, verifiable and irreversible” end of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and intercontinental missile programs.

Jongun says he is committed to “denuclearisation” in some form, but he is expected to demand security guarantees in return.

Most expert observers are sceptical that even an unprecedented summit between the two leaders can lead to a rapid breakthrough, and Trump admitted it would be a long and difficult process.

“We’re not going to go in and sign something on June 12. We never were. I told him today, ‘Take your time’,” he said, adding nevertheless that he expects “a really positive result in the end”.