‘More US talks with N Korea needed’

– The United States and North Korea will hold further talks next week to prepare for a second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un later this month, Seoul said yesterday.

The news comes a day after Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative for North Korea, said more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit scheduled in Vietnam.

“North Korea and the US have agreed to continue negotiations in a third country in Asia during the week of February 17,” Seoul’s

Seoul

presidential spokesperson Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters.

He did not provide further details.

Biegun travelled to Pyongyang earlier this month for three days of preparatory meetings with North Korean officials, with the State Department saying the talks focused on Trump and Kim’s “commitments of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula”.

Trump and Kim are due to meet in Hanoi from February 27 to 28 following their landmark first summit in Singapore last June.

That meeting – the first-ever between the leaders of the US and North Korea – produced a vaguely-worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards “the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.

But progress has stalled, with analysts saying that tangible progress on denuclearisation will be needed for the second summit, if the summit is not to be dismissed as “reality TV” (a reference to Trump). –