TRUMP EYES DEMILITARIZED ZONE, SINGAPORE AS POSSIBLE VENUES FOR US-KOREAN SUMMIT
WASHINGTON— US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea would be an excellent venue for his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un but that Singapore was also a possible site.
Trump’s comments at a news conference with visiting Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari suggested the Peace House on the DMZ, where Kim met South Korean President Moon Jae-in last week, was the likely setting for the first-ever meeting between sitting leaders of the United States and North Korea.
No specific date yet
But a senior US official said Singapore was still high on the list of potential sites for the summit, whose date still remains to be established.
Trump wants to hold it by late May or early June.
“We’re looking at various countries, including Singapore. And we are also talking about the possibility of the DMZ Peace House/Freedom House,” Trump said.
Symbolic value
Trump said the Peace House carried symbolic value that having the summit in a third country would not have.
Some US officials have argued privately that having the summit in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas would present the unwelcome appearance of Trump traveling to Kim instead of the two of them meeting at a neutral site.
But officials have also debated how far Kim would be able to travel.
“I think that some people maybe don’t like the look of that,” Trump said of the idea of a DMZ summit. “And some people like it very much.”
He said he had raised the idea with Moon, days after dramatic images of Moon meeting Kim at the Peace House dominated the news.
“There’s something that I like about it because you’re there,” he said.
Buoying prospects for the Trump-Kim summit was a North Korean announcement on Sunday that it would close its main nuclear test site next month.—