North Korea’s top envoy, Kim Yong-chol, has arrived in Washington, DC, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap, in a visit aimed at laying the groundwork for a second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Neither the United States nor North Korea has announced any meetings, but Kim is expected to hold talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a hotel in the US capital on Friday.
The meeting will likely be followed by a Kim visit to the White House, where he could meet with Trump, two officials told The Associated Press news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.
Trump has spoken several times of having a second summit with Kim early this year and has exchanged multiple letters with the North Korean leader despite little tangible progress on a vague denuclearisation agreement reached at their first meeting in Singapore last June.
Since then, several private analysts have published reports detailing continuing North Korean development of nuclear and missile technology.
‘Working to make progress’
Kim Yong-chol, North Korea’s lead negotiator in denuclearisation talks, arrived in Washington on a commercial flight from China’s capital, Beijing, according to Yonhap.
Pompeo, who made several trips to Pyongyang last year, planned to meet Kim Yong-chol last November, but the talks were called off at the last minute.
Contact was resumed after a New Year’s speech by North Korea’s leader, in which he said he was willing to meet Trump “at any time”, Cho Yoon-je, the South Korean ambassador to the US, told reporters last week.
The talks had stalled over North Korea‘s refusal to provide a detailed accounting of its nuclear and missile facilities that would be used by inspectors to verify any deal to dismantle them. The North has been demanding that the US lift harsh sanctions and provide it with security guarantees before it takes any steps beyond its initial suspension of nuclear and missile tests.
At a conference of US diplomats at the State Department on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged the lack of progress.
He called the Trump-Kim dialogue “promising” but stressed that “we still await concrete steps by North Korea to dismantle the nuclear weapons that threaten our people and our allies in the region.”
A White House official, while not confirming plans for Friday’s meeting, said “a lot of positive things” are happening related to North Korea’s denuclearisation. The official said US-North Korea conversations were continuing, adding that the leaders of the two countries had established a “good relationship”.
The official, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, said the two sides were “working to make progress” on the denuclearisation goal and that Trump “looks forward to meeting Chairman Kim again at their second summit at a place and time yet to be determined”.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
