The White House said on Friday that President Donald Trump is meeting in the Oval Office with a top North Korean official amid growing speculation about a possible second summit between the U.S. president and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
That the official, Kim Yong-chol, was in Washington at all was itself noteworthy. North Korean diplomats in the U.S. are generally barred from traveling much beyond New York City, where they have an office at the United Nations.
“President Donald J. Trump will meet with Kim Yong Chol, Vice Chairman of the Workers Party of Korea and Chairman of the Korea Asia Pacific Peace Committee, today at 12:15 pm in the Oval Office,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “They will discuss relations between the two countries and continued progress on North Korea’s final, fully verified denuclearization.”
Kim’s arrival in Washington — he landed late Thursday — indicated that the Trump administration is eager to jump-start stalled nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang.
Kim met earlier on Friday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other U.S. diplomats involved in the nuclear discussions. He is reported to be carrying a letter from Kim Jong Un for Trump, the latest of several missives the two heads of state have exchanged.
Kim met with Pompeo and his team at a Dupont Circle hotel. The officials all appeared before reporters briefly, but did not respond to questions, including whether a location had been chosen for a leaders’ summit.
Steve Biegun, a U.S. special representative for the North Korean talks, was among those at the Friday morning meeting. He is expected to head to Sweden soon for more talks with North Korean officials that could also help plan for a summit.
Biegun has struggled to make contact with his North Korean counterparts during the past several months, adding to concerns that Pyongyang is not serious about vague promises to denuclearize.
Kim Jong Un made that vague promise in a joint declaration with Trump during their first summit, held in Singapore last June. The historic gathering helped ease tensions between the two countries, which had been marked by heated rhetoric, including Trump’s promises that Pyongyang would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the United States.
But since then, analysts and officials say North Korea has taken no serious steps to curb its nuclear weapons program, raising fears that the isolated Asian country is trying to pursue talks merely as a way to, over time, weaken the sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on it.
If a second summit takes place, it will also likely be in Asia. Vietnam has emerged as a top potential host.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
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Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/18/north-korea-diplomat-trump-1113713
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