Trump Will Have Meeting With Kim on Wednesday, Follow-Ups Expected Thursday - WH

The first one-on-one meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will take place on Wednesday evening, followed by a dinner with advisers in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, Reuters reported, citing White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

According to Reuters, Sanders told reporters on Air Force One that Trump is slated to arrive in Vietnam late Tuesday local time. On Wednesday morning, he will hold a meeting with Vietnamese leaders before the start of the summit with Kim that evening. Follow-up meetings with North Korean leader will take place on Thursday.

Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet in Hanoi on 27-28 February for their second summit on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Trump departed for Vietnam on Monday, saying he was looking forward to a highly productive second summit with Kim.

Heading over to Vietnam for my meeting with Kim Jong Un. Looking forward to a very productive Summit!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 25 февраля 2019 г.

Trump also said during a meeting with US governors at the White House on Monday that he expects to make further progress on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula during his second summit with the North Korean leader.

Earlier on Monday, the Yonhap News Agency reported that US and North Korean negotiators had managed to narrow down their positions on a number of issues during the fifth day of preliminary talks ahead of the summit.

Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, told reporters earlier on Monday that Washington and Pyongyang could also agree at the Vietnam summit to declare the end of the Korean War.

Seoul previously insisted that the United States and both Koreas must be part of any agreement that ends the war. However, the presidential spokesman suggested that the announcement of the end of the war between North and South Korea was actually made last fall, when the militaries of both countries signed an agreement in which they rejected any hostility toward one another.

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The 1950-1953 war between North Korea, supported by China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea, supported by the UN forces that predominantly consisted of the US military, ended with an armistice agreement — a peace treaty was never signed. This means that North Korea and the United States are still technically at war.

However, after the first summit, held last year in Singapore, the US president said North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat to the United States.

The first US-North Korean summit resulted in an agreement stipulating that Pyongyang would make efforts to promote the complete denuclearization of the peninsula in exchange for the United States and South Korea freezing their military drills.

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