United States President Donald Trump told his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in that he wanted to hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the White House said in a statement, according to AFP.
White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said Trump and Moon, who met on Friday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, “reaffirmed their commitment to achieve the final, fully verified denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”. However, she added that Trump and Moon agreed that “vigorous sanctions” need to be maintained so that North Korea understands that denuclearisation is the only option.
Moon’s top press secretary Yoon Young-chan said Trump asked for close cooperation between the United States and South Korea, so that his next summit with Kim would be a “historic milestone” in the process of denuclearising the Korean Peninsula, the Yonhap news agency reported.
The US president met the North Korean leader for the first time on June 12 at a summit in Singapore. At the summit, Kim pledged to get rid of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme. However, on November 3, North Korea threatened to resume its nuclear programme if the US did not lift sanctions on the country. Later that month, Washington abruptly postponed high-level talks with Pyongyang.
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