White House team heading to Singapore

Prep happening in case summit happens after all

A White House team is heading to Singapore this weekend as previously planned to prepare for a possible summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader, a further sign that the meeting Trump called off might get back on track.

Trump on Friday welcomed the North’s conciliatory response to his letter withdrawing from the June 12 meeting and said it was even possible the meeting with Kim Jong Un could take place on the originally planned date.

“They very much want to do it; we’d like to do it,” he said. Trump later tweeted that the two countries were “having very productive talks.”

On Saturday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said a team will leave for Singapore as scheduled “to prepare should the summit take place.” The team will be led by Joe Hagin, depu- ty chief of staff for operations.

Kim on Saturday met unexpectedly with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to discuss salvaging the canceled summit, a new twist in the whirlwind of diplomacy over the fate of the North’s nuclear arsenal.

The two leaders met for two hours on the North Korean side of Panmunjom, a “truce village” inside the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, said Yoon Young-chan, Moon’s spokesman.

“The two heads of state had a frank exchange of views on the implementation of the April 27 summit agreement and for the successful holding of the North Korea-United States summit,” Yoon said.

Moon and Kim held their first summit meeting on the South Korean side of Panmunjom on April 27. The second meeting, held in secret and announced only after it took place, came amid doubts about the future of Kim’s planned summit meeting with Trump.

Moon’s government has worked for months to help set up the first meeting between the leaders of North Korea and the U.S. The government hoped that Kim and Trump would resolve a decades-old dispute over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The Associated Press and the New York Times contributed to this report.

South Korea Presidential Blue House / Yonhap News Agency / Associated Press North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (right) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in (second from left) talk during a meeting at the northern side of Panmunjom “truce village” in North Korea.