United States President Donald Trump has said that he plans to hold the next meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after the midterm elections next month.
Trump is undertaking a whirlwind tour across the country to highlight his administration’s achievements, which includes hosting the first-ever meeting with Kim in Singapore in June and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visits to North Korea for denuclearisation talks. He remarked, “I just can’t leave now,” The Hill reported.
During the previous meeting in Singapore, Kim and Trump agreed to work towards achieving denuclearisation in the Korean Peninsula, where the former expressed his commitment to abandon the country’s nuclear weapons programme in exchange for “security guarantees”.
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On October 7, Pompeo had visited Pyongyang and held talks with the North Korean leader on laying the groundwork for the second summit between the latter and Trump and resuming the stalled denuclearisation talks between the two countries. The meeting was described as “good and productive”. The two leaders agreed to hold the second meeting “at the earliest possible date”.
While Pyongyang, on the one hand, repeatedly asserted that it has taken various steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for a possible sanctions relief, the US,on the other hand, has reiterated that it will not lift the sanctions unless North Korea achieves “complete and fully verifiable denuclearisation”.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho had said at the 73rd United Nations General Assembly last month that there would be no unilateral denuclearisation without “any trust in the US and confidence in its own national security.”
(With ANI inputs)