US-N Korea summit details to be announced next week: Trump
US President Donald Trump yesterday said the details of his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be announced next week, and that a date and place had been settled. "We'll be announcing early next week and they very much want the meeting," said Trump. The upcoming summit is expected to be held in Vietnam in late February. Here's more.
"I think most of you know where the location is. I don't think it's a great secret," said Trump, touting what he called the "tremendous progress" made with Pyongyang. Trump held a historic first summit with Kim in Singapore on June 12 last year to try to persuade the reclusive North Korean strongman to give up the country's nuclear weapons.
The American president has come under fire at home from critics who say that Kim hasn't taken enough concrete steps toward denuclearization to be given a second summit. The US special representative on North Korea, Stephen Biegun, was to say in a speech yesterday that the United States remains "clear-eyed" and wants a firm accounting of Pyongyang's weapons programs as part of any deal.
"Before the process of denuclearization can be final, we must have a complete understanding of the full extent of the North Korean WMD and missile programs through a comprehensive declaration," Biegun was to say in a speech at Stanford University, according to excerpts.
"We must reach agreement on expert access and monitoring mechanisms of key sites to international standards, and ultimately ensure the removal or destruction of stockpiles of fissile material, weapons, missiles, launchers and other weapons of mass destruction," Biegun was to say. If North Korea follows through, "the United States, will, in return, exceed anything previously thought possible," he added.
US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Tuesday that North Korea would resist pressure because its leaders see nuclear weapons capability as "critical to regime survival." Trump yesterday pushed back against intelligence leaders who publicly disagree with his foreign policy positions on North Korea, Iran and Syria. "I disagree with certain things that they said, I think I'm right," Trump had said.
