Trump to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un in new year

US President Donald Trump has said he hopes to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un early next year over the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

The announcement came on Saturday as Trump was returning home to Washington after meeting with leaders of the world’s biggest economies at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.

“I think we’re going to do one fairly [soon] – you know, into January, February, I think,” Trump told reporters with him on Air Force One.

“We’re getting along very well. We have a good relationship.”

In June, Trump and Kim opened up a face-to-face dialogue after months of trading military threats and pointed barbs.

The two leaders signed a vaguely worded document on denuclearisation, but progress has since stalled as Washington and Pyongyang spar over the meaning of the document.

North Korea has taken few concrete steps to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was due to meet a top North Korean official in early November, but the meeting was abruptly put off, with Pyongyang insisting that Washington ease sanctions.

On Friday, Trump discussed the situation with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

The pair “reaffirmed their commitment to achieve the final, fully verified denuclearisation” of North Korea, Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

They agreed on the need for “maintaining vigorous enforcement of existing sanctions to ensure North Korea understands that denuclearisation is the only path,” Sanders said.

In the Argentine capital, Trump held separate bilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday that primarily focused on trade, but the US leader told Xi he had agreed to work with him “100 percent” on North Korea.

When asked on Saturday if he would ever host the North Korean leader in the United States, Trump replied: “At some point, yeah.”

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies