Trump tweets Kim date

Singapore peace talks

US President Donald Trump has high hopes of “doing something very meaningful” to curtail North Korea’s nuclear ambitions at a summit in Singapore next month, after Pyongyang smoothed the way for talks by freeing three US prisoners yesterday.

The date and location of the first-ever meeting of a sitting US president and North Korean leader was announced by Mr Trump on Twitter.

“The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th. We will both try to make it a very special moment for world peace!” Mr Trump wrote.

He made the announcement after a US government aircraft touched down at Joint Base Andrews near Washington carrying the Americans released by North Korea in a move to clear the way for the bilateral summit.

Mr Trump faces a difficult task persuading Mr Kim to abandon nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests that heightened US-North Korean tensions throughout 2017.

The pair exchanged fiery rhetoric last year over North Korea’s attempts to build a nuclear weapon that could reach the US. But tensions began to ease around the time of the North’s participation in February’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.

As Mr Trump greeted the freed Americans, he said he believed Mr Kim, who has led North Korea for seven years and is believed to be in his mid-30s, wanted to bring his country “into the real world.”

“I think we have a very good chance of doing something very meaningful,” he said.

“My proudest achievement will be — this is part of it — when we denuclearise that entire peninsula.”

New US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has visited Pyongyang twice in recent weeks, but there has been no sign that he cleared up the central question of whether North Korea would be willing to bargain away nuclear weapons that its rulers had long seen as crucial to their survival.